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Compliments of 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Twenty-second Annual Dinner given by 
the Montauk Club of Brooklyn, in Celebra- 
tion of his Seventy-ninth Birthday, April 
26, 1913. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : With each recurrence 
of these anniversaries I am more impressed with the perma- 
nence of friendship. The proof is here to-night. For twenty- 
two years the members of this Club in celebrating my birthday 
added to the pleasure of the first meeting an original com- 
pliment. In twenty-two years several generations of club 
members come and go, but there is always a central phalanx 
of veterans to keep up principles and traditions of the organ- 
ization. I have been greeted to-night by fathers who have 
brought their sons, and by sons who have brought the grand- 
sons of those who welcomed me within these walls twenty-two 
years ago. The political revolutions which have taken place 
in the country and in the State, the financial crises which have 
for a time paralyzed our industries, and the agitations which 
seemed revolutionary, but disappeared, have neither interrupted 
nor impaired our numbers or the pleasures of our anni- 
versaries. 

Lucian, the famous gossip of antiquity, the predecessor 
and originator of the immortal Pepys, in one of his stories, 
says that he called upon a famous centenarian named Gorgias 
who lived at Corinth seventeen hundred years ago, anxious 
to put the questions to which every centenarian has been sub- 
jected ever since, and probably before, for there is nothing 
new under the sun. Lucian called upon Gorgias to find out 
the secrets of his extreme age. He said to him, " You have 
just had your one hundred and eighth birthday and are enjoy- 
ing splendid health, vigor, and vitality. Now, to what do you 



ascribe it ? " Gorgias answered, " To the fact that I never 
have accepted an invitation to dine out." One of our cen- 
tenarians a few days ago, answering the same question at one 
hundred and three, said in his case it was due to the fact that 
he had eaten a red herring every day. I think the American 
had the better time. He certainly did not eat that herring 
alone, and it created a thirst which led to companionship in 
quenching it. 

What a ghastly century was that of Gorgias who had 
never dined out. The brilliant men of his period, the sculptors 
who are the despair of our artists, the architects whom we can 
never equal, the philosophers and poets who have been models 
of all succeeding generations, the orators, statesmen, and sol- 
diers whom subsequent history has never eclipsed, all were 
visitors during his long life to beautiful and artistic Corinth, 
and he might, at the dinners which were invariably given 
them, have enjoyed the pleasures of their society and left an 
autobiography of personal reminiscences of incalculable value 
to posterity. 

I have met most of the distinguished men and women of 
my time in this and other countries, and with scarcely an 
exception the best I ever knew of them occurred at dinner. 
An evening with Gladstone was a liberal education. He pos- 
sessed the most comprehensive mind of his generation and was 
gifted with the most graphic power of expressing his opinions. 
A formal interview with him was of little value, but in the 
confidences and intimacies of a long dinner at a friend's house, 
Gladstone could be more eloquent, more impressive, and more 
delightful than in his best efforts in the House of Commons. 
It was possible on such occasions to study the workings of 
that marvelous mind and get an insight into the sources of his 
magnetic power. 

To read Browning's poems was one thing, but to hear 
Browning talk at dinner was much more human, informing, 
and charming. He said to me that when, at the request of the 
government, the Duke of Sutherland gave a dinner to the 
Shah of Persia at the Stafford House, he was one of the 
guests. In order to impress this semi-savage monarch, every- 
one was requested to wear all their regalia. The Prince of 



Wales and members of the royal family, the dukes, marquises, 
and earls came in all the medieval splendor of their rank and 
order, and with all their jewels, real and paste. Mr. Brown- 
ing said that, having no rank, he came in the crimson gown of 
an honor man of Cambridge University. Diamonds did not 
impress the Shah, because the buttons on his coat were real 
stones as big as horse chestnuts. The ermine and tiaras pro- 
duced no impression upon him, because he and his suite were 
arrayed in more barbaric splendor. But his wild eye roving 
around the table came upon this crimson Cambridge robe at 
the foot where, as a commoner, the poet sat. The Shah in- 
stantly said, " Who is that great man? " " Why, that is Mr. 
Browning." "What is he?" " He is a poet." "Command 
him to come here and sit beside me." So a royalty or a prime 
minister was displaced and the embarrassed poet was put be- 
side the autocrat. The Shah said, " I understand you are a 
poet, a great poet," which Browning modestly admitted. 
" Well, then," he said, " I want you to stay here with me, be- 
cause more than the fact that I am the supreme ruler of Persia, 
I am a great poet myself." Mr.- Browning assured me that 
the story was true; that the Shah said to the then Prince of 
Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, " This is a magnificent 
palace." The prince said, " Yes, this is the finest palace in 
Great Britain." " Well," said the Shah, " let me give you a 
little piece of advice. When one of my nobility gets rich 
enough to live in a house like this, I cut off his head and take 
what he has. It is very simple and saves a great deal of 
trouble." 

But the night will not permit an enumeration. I have 
learned more State secrets from Cabinet Ministers abroad in 
the confidences of the dinner table than I could have had in 
years of residence, and, under similar circumstances, the armor 
of reserve has dropped from Presidents of the United States, 
and their troubles, their anxieties, their wishes, their ambitions, 
their friends and their enemies have been an open book. " Ah ! 
but," says the philosopher who is eternally denouncing the 
opportunities of wealth, " dinners are all very well for you, 
but how about the rest of us? " Why, my dear sir, the dullest, 
most stupid and most borish dinner I ever attended cost one 



hundred dollars a plate, while my most delightful evenings 
have been with a bohemian coterie where a dollar was the 
limit. The cost of the dinner, the rarity of its wines, and the 
brand of its cigars are of no account unless about the table 
are men and women of mind, of individuality, of versatility, 
of something to give which is worth receiving, and a willing- 
ness to listen to the message which you think is worth 
delivering. 

Senator Hoar, who in his long, brilliant, and most distin- 
guished career had met everybody worth knowing, told me that 
no gathering, however small or however large, equaled in wit 
and wisdom, in flashes of genius, in things always to be re- 
membered and never to be forgotten, the weekly luncheons 
at Parker's in Boston, where Longfellow, Hawthorne, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker and others, and Judge 
Hoar, the brighest of them all, met for a weekday luncheon. 

Judge Robertson, of Westchester, and I were invited by 
Secretary of State Seward to dine with him in Washington 
on our way to the Republican National Convention which re- 
nominated President Lincoln. That dinner changed the Vice 
President from Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York, to An- 
drew Johnson, of Tennessee, and made a different chapter in 
American history. 

The newspapers which tell us everything say that the pres- 
ent tariff and income tax bills were perfected at a dinner at 
the White House. This brings us in immediate and acute 
contact with the most interesting of current events. 

In my fifty-seven years in public and semi-public life I 
have participated in many political revolutions, and in none 
of them have these changes especially of the tariff been re- 
ceived with so little excitement and scarcely a suggestion of 
passion. There are no editorials or flaming speeches predict- 
ing direful disasters, or indignation meetings resolving that we 
are on the brink of financial and industrial ruin. These tariff 
propositions going as they do to the very foundation of our 
financial and industrial system, and the manner in which they 
are received, are high indications of that much abused word 
" Progress." We have become a deliberative and contemplative 
people. Without inherited prejudices or partisan bias, we can 



calmly weigh measures and policies and arrive at individual 
conclusions as to results when they crystallize into law. We 
all recognize that at some time these theories must be tried. 
We have all recognized that at some time the theorists must 
hav« devolved upon them the responsibilities of government. 
There has been no period since the Civil War when experi- 
ments could be tried with less danger than now. The country 
never was so prosperous, employment was never so general, 
wages were never so high, the farmer was never so rich or re- 
ceiving such returns for the product of his field and his live 
stock, the output of the manufactories was never so great, the 
expansion of our credit and the amount of our exchanges were 
never so large, and our imports and exports never reached such 
a volume. The fly in the amber, or, to put it more seriously, 
our irritation and discontent under these otherwise happy con- 
ditions is the high cost of living. The laws which our new 
Rulers are putting in force will affect equally all the people; 
therefore, it is the duty of all of us to wish them God speed and 
good luck. It is the hope of all of us that the realization of 
their dreams, which some of us have feared, will be in the line 
of their most sanguine hopes. Their problem is a difficult one. 
In simple form, it is how to reduce the cost of living without 
impairing opportunities of earning a living. In that is the 
whole crux of the situation. 

It has been our habit to touch lightly and if possible in- 
formingly upon the things that have happened since our last 
gathering. The Constitution of the United States has not 
been amended in over one hundred years. The Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments, which were passed after the Civil 
War, were really not amendments, but simply declarations of 
principles which were in the Declaration of Independence and 
in the spirit of the original instrument. 

But after over one hundred years of satisfaction with 
the Constitution, within this year two amendments have been 
added, one an income tax, the other for the election of United 
States Senators by the people. I am not going to discuss 
these measures. They are here to stay. But when the his- 
tory of their passage comes to be written, it will be disclosed 
that there are some curious phases of human nature. 



8 

When the amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States for an income tax came before our New York Legis- 
lature, it was defeated by a message from Governor Hughes. 
That message did not oppose an income tax, but clearly stated 
that the needs of our commonwealth were growing so rapidly 
and the sources of State taxation were so limited that the 
income tax should be left to the States, and the general govern- 
ment, with its infinite possibilities, could raise revenue from 
other sources. When the income tax amendment was under dis- 
cussion in the Senate, I had a heart-to-heart talk with a group 
of Senators from the Western States who were urging its 
adoption. I said to them, " Our revenues at present are fur- 
nishing a surplus. We never will need to resort to this method 
of taxation except in a great emergency. Then why do you 
want it now ? " Their answer was, " Because with an income 
tax we can collect one-half of the expenses of the government 
from your State of New York, and the other half from New 
England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois." The 
exemption of four thousand dollars a year in the present bill 
shows that these gentlemen control this legislation, because 
very few in their States have an income of that size. It is 
an interesting question in legislation of this kind, since in no 
country in the world where they have an income tax is the 
exemption equal to one thousand dollars, whether in order to 
have the whole people alert, inquisitive, and critical upon the 
expenses of government and in checking extravagance, the 
largest possible number should not have their attention called 
to those expenditures by contributing something toward the 
support of the government. 

When the income tax amendment was before our New 
York Legislature, I said to a man who as much as any other 
controlled that body, " Did you think Governor Hughes was 
right ? " He said, " Yes." I then told him what these West- 
ern Senators had said to me. He said, " That I believe, too." 
I said, " Then why are you urging the adoption of this amend- 
ment by our State?" His answer was, "Because Bryan 
wants it." 

When the amendment for the election of the United 
State Senators by the people was so framed that the United 



States Government had the power to see that all the people 
voted and that none was disfranchised, I said to the Senators 
from the States where the negro is disfranchised, " Do you 
see danger of a force bill if this amendment is adopted? 
Don't you think that as crises arise, and they will arise, where 
a majority of the States feel that certain measures in which 
they are interested could be passed if all the people, including 
the negroes, in your States voted, they will pass laws under 
which the government will see that they do vote, at least for 
United States Senators?" They said, "Yes, we see all those 
dangers." I said, " Then why are you voting for it ? " Their 
answer was, " Because Bryan wants it." 

This brings us to a horizontal view of one of the para- 
doxes of our American life. We are rushing with unprece- 
dented rapidity for us, for we are a conservative people, toward 
the breaking down of the safeguards which are in the Con- 
stitution against hasty and inconsiderate action by the people. 
We are proceeding upon the theory that leadership no longer 
does or ought to exist, that all matters should originate with 
and be decided upon by the people as a mass on the passion 
or emotion of the moment and without the intervention of 
representative bodies or interpretations by the courts, and yet 
there never was a time when leadership counted for so much 
as it does to-day. There never was a time when leaders 
asserted themselves with such confidence and autocratic au- 
thority. More than four millions of Republicans followed 
Colonel Roosevelt in the last campaign not because they 
wanted to break up the Republican party, not because they 
adopted all the doctrines of his platform or of his speeches, 
but because they believed in Roosevelt and wanted for Presi- 
dent of the United States a strong, militant, aggressive, and 
audacious leader. The National Convention of the Demo- 
cratic party at Baltimore was swayed by Mr. Bryan. It was 
recognized that the great mass of his party recognized him as 
a supreme leader whom they were willing to follow wherever 
he chose to go. For the first time in one hundred and twenty- 
three years the President of the United States leaves the 
Executive Mansion and appears at the Capitol to impress upon 



IO 

the Legislative Branch of the Government his views upon 
pending legislation. These are not symptoms, but facts. With 
all the shouting and the trumpeting for a pure democracy, 
the exactions of our busy, hurried, rapid, nervous life call for 
a leader in every department more than at any other period 
in our history. 

The same is true in the industrial disorders which are now 
so acute. In their more revolutionary phases they are gov- 
erned by a leader with very few assistants, whose power is 
unlimited, whose authority is unquestioned. 

Another curious phase of this trend to pure democracy 
is that its leaders are opposed to majorities. Ten per cent 
of the voters initiate a number of radical measures. They 
are submitted to a referendum at the next election, and a 
plurality of the votes cast make them laws or insert them in 
the Constitution. In the history of these referendums the 
vote has averaged about twenty per cent of the total vote at any 
election. The measures have been adopted by the petitioners 
who constitute one-half, and many times more than one-half 
of those voting carrying the day because the majority of the 
electorate have not cast their ballots. When it is proposed 
that no law by referendum shall become a law and no amend- 
ment shall be attached to the Constitution unless it receives 
a majority of all the votes cast at the election when it is sub- 
mitted, without exception the reformer cries " No," reforms 
must be carried not by the unintelligent mass, but by the few 
who understand the needs of the people. 

I believe in trade unions and trade organizations. In the 
railway world, I have been their best friend, but there is a 
new movement now progressing all over the world and forg- 
ing to the front with us with lurid exhibitions of its power. 
As a student all my life of every idea which has captured 
any considerable number of people, whether upon religious, or 
social, or industrial, or economic questions, I bought the book 
which gives the most authoritative and vigorous exhibition of 
Syndicalism by one of its ablest and most eloquent writers. 
It is very interesting, though not yet very alarming, except in 
its fierce and bloody riots to compel other unions to join. He 
says, " We have in the United States to-day nearly five hun- 



II 

dred thousand organized fighting soldiers. In the whole 
world we have seven millions. We are comrades with a 
common purpose. The cry of our army is ' No Quarter.' We 
want all you possess. We will be content with nothing less 
than all you possess. Here are our hands. They are strong 
hands. The able-bodied workers would not have to labor 
more than two or three hours every day to feed everybody, 
clothe everybody, house everybody and give fair measure of 
little luxuries to everybody." Then he goes on to say, " When 
all these things are accomplished, then all the world will be 
impelled to action— scientists formulating law, inventors em- 
ploying law, artists and sculptors painting canvases and shaping 
clay, poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and 
by statecraft. Our intention is to destroy present-day society 
as a fact, and also to take possession of the world with all its 
wealth and machinery and government." 

Here are a few of the bunkers over which this army 
must successfully propel its bomb: There are about eight 
millions of people, men and women, in this country who own 
their own homes and will fight to retain them. There are 
over four millions who own their own farms, other millions 
who get their living from farms and none are so tenacious of 
their rights as the farmers. There are about eleven millions 
who are engaged in various industries in a way that interests 
them to a point where they will not tamely surrender their rights 
in raising stock, or as florists, or horticulturists, or nurserymen. 
There are the millions of small shopkeepers everywhere whose 
living and the future for their families are in the goods in their 
stores. Our eyes are so blinded by the increase in the capitali- 
zation of great corporations like the steel or tobacco or 
sugar that we lose sight of the fact that there never were 
so many small manufacturers with limited capital, employing 
few men, among whom the proprietors are the hardest workers, 
scattered all over the United States. The foundations of 
our society are deep in the- selfish interests, in the ambitions, 
in the hopes and in the affections for their offspring of ninety- 
nine per cent of our people. Beside all that is the national 
conscience with an irradicable sense of right and wrong, based 
upon respect for the property and lives and liberties of others, 



12 



for which every church, every common school, every agency 
of education and instruction, every fraternal lodge, is a re- 
cruiting station. 

Now the crux of that idea is that when this millennium 
has been brought around nobody will have to work over two 
hours in twenty-four. During the rest of the day everybody 
will be happy because industrially occupying their time in 
creating, or making, or producing things which are useful and 
helpful to their fellows. A distinguished philosopher has said 
that the mainsprings of action are ambition, necessity and greed. 
It may be growing out of what happened in the Garden of Eden 
that effort requires a spur. Everyone of us know that in our 
own experience. There is no one at this table here to-night who 
would be what he is unless there had been a motive to accom- 
plish something for himself. There is no truth more self- 
evident than that this selfishness has in it also the elements of 
patriotism. The man who forges ahead and in his advance 
creates continually larger opportunities for others to get on 
is selfishly a climber and unselfishly a philanthropist. The 
curse of the youth of our country is idleness. Our hooligans, 
our gang men, our gun men, our young criminals are all the 
products of idleness. The ambition of the boy at school is 
aroused first by competition with his fellows. As he advances 
to the high school or the college it is for the honors which can 
be achieved. I look back over sixty years of continuous ef- 
fort and when I try to differentiate the causes of my health and 
happiness I come back always to work. I never yet knew 
an idle man who was a happy one. I mean an idle man who 
was such from choice. Every man I ever knew who was 
doing the best he could in the line of his talent and equipment 
and who became fond of his work, and who outside of his 
regular occupation had some fad which interested him, and 
who could on occasion play as hard as he worked, was healthy 
and happy himself and radiated happiness and inspiration to 
everyone about him. 

We are all workingmen, but I have known thousands of 
what are known as laboring men ; that is, those who earn a liv- 
ing by the work of their hands, who in their little gar- 
dens found repose and recreation, who in their church, or in 



13 

their lodges, or in their social work, discovered never-ending 
sources of education in broad-mindedness, in higher ideals of 
citizenship and material spiritual and intellectual advance- 
ment. 

It is an old charge that Republics are ungrateful. Per- 
haps that is a mistake and they are only forgetful. I recall 
on this question three of my late colleagues in the Senate who 
were among its most distinguished and useful members and 
are now in private life. 

When the case for the expulsion of Senator Lorimer of 
Illinois was tried before the Committee on Privileges and 
Elections, a large majority of the Committee, though they 
knew that the newspapers generally demanded Mr. Lorimer's 
expulsion, and such was the sentiment of a majority of the 
people, yet acting as judges they could not find in the testi- 
mony sufficient warrant for a verdict against him. 

Senator Beveridge, one of the most brilliant Senators of 
his term in the Senate, made a minority report and led the 
fight against Lorimer. He had often before proved himself 
to be an accomplished and brilliant debater, but he never 
was so able, resourceful and eloquent as in this battle. It was 
on the eve of his fight for a re-election to the Senate, and he 
and his friends felt that his reward was certain. He made 
one of the most thorough and able canvasses of Indiana that 
any candidate ever did, and yet he was beaten. 

One of the most useful and able Senators in my time 
was Norris Brown of Nebraska. Mr. Brown believed that 
nine-tenths of the people of his State were in favor of a con- 
stitutional amendment for an income tax. He introduced the 
amendment and gave his time, energy and remakable diplomacy 
to secure its passage. I am quite certain from my own famil- 
iarity with the course of that legislation that except for Mr. 
Brown's advocacy and support, the amendment would not have 
passed the Senate. When he came before his people for the 
approval of his course, he was beaten. 

My captivating friend, Jonathan Bourne of Oregon, was 
the author of most of the so-called reforms which have sub- 
stituted the initiative, the referendum and the recall in Oregon 
for representative government and made the Governor and the 



H 

Legislature rubber stamps. In season and out of season, in 
the Senate and on the platform, and in the press, he por- 
trayed the merits of this return to a pure democracy and this 
recovery by the people from an obsolete system of their full 
rights. It is said that the placing of one of his greatest 
speeches on this question in the hands of every voter in the 
newly admitted State of Arizona led to the adoption of the 
most redical Constitution ever known. We all thought that 
whatever might happen to the rest of us, the call for re-election 
of Jonathan Bourne was to come with a unanimity never 
known before by a grateful people. Yet he was beaten. 

It is an interesting study in politics whether people are 
ungrateful, which I do not believe, or forgetful, which may 
happen, or whether their Tribune is not sometimes mistaken in 
thinking that he knows just what they want. 

It has been the fashion in all ages for elderly people to 
lament the good old times and long for their recall. I do not 
share in any way in -this desire. Solomon repudiated it, but 
then Solomon had more things than all his predecessors put 
together, including the family, and notwithstanding his hun- 
dreds of wives and thousands of concubines seems to have 
been very happy in his domestic relations. George Washing- 
ton, on the other hand, thought that the times as they were 
in the few years preceding his death far worse than in earlier 
days and that they gave little hope for the future. As I look 
back over fifty-seven years of intense activity in many de- 
partments of life, of a full share of both successes and fail- 
ures, of hard knocks and compensating triumphs, of sorrows 
and joys, I come to the conclusion that while one year may 
be very bad, very miserable and very hopeless, yet take 
time by decades every ten years as a whole is infinitely better 
than all the preceding ones. 

Still, there are some things which seem to be permanently 
lost, and are to be greatly regretted, for the enjoyment of life. 
One of them is conversation. The most charming volumes in 
history are made up of the conversation of agreeable talkers, 
but it is a general complaint that now conversation is a lost 
art. Some say it is because bridge whist has so shortened 
the dinner as to make it a feed instead of a function, and the 



15 

craze for gambling in bridge whist has destroyed the freedom 
from care and elasticity of mind which are necessary for the 
interchange of thought, of humor, of anecdote, of argument 
and of raillerie. We ought to be grateful, therefore, to any- 
one who can help in the restoration of that most charming, I 
almost say indispensable medium for the enjoyment of friends 
and acquaintances — conversation. 

President Wilson is happily contributing to this end. He 
is advocating in a series of brilliantly written magazine articles 
what he calls " The New Freedom." There is intense curiosity 
to know what the New Freedom means. This century and a 
quarter of unexampled and unparalleled growth and prosperity 
under our Constitution and laws has given us the freedom so 
gloriously expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The 
Declaration of Independence was a philosophic statement of 
liberty, but the Constitution of the United States crystallized 
it into law. Jefferson's idea of liberty was that governments 
are based upon the individual, and that he must have the largest 
freedom with the fewest possible restrictions and the least 
possible legislation. 

President Wilson now has an opportunity of which he 
must avail himself of putting into law his " New Freedom." 
We are told by the press, always so argus-eyed and so truthful, 
that at a conference at the White House a few days since the 
President agreed with the Chairmen of the Committees of 
the Senate and House of Representatives which have charge 
of appropriation bills that the one now passing should have 
on it a rider exempting labor unions and farmers' associations 
from the restrictions and penalties of the Sherman Anti-Trust 
Law. They get a liberty which no one else enjoys and be- 
come a privileged class. Now this is practical. It is a New 
Freedom. The first restraint ever put since the adoption of 
our Constitution in 1787 upon the activities of the individual 
when acting in great combinations was by the Sherman Anti- 
Trust Law. Under prosecutions commenced by Cleveland, 
and continued by McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, these com- 
binations have been relentlessly pursued because violating the 
Sherman Anti-Trust Law. Some of them have been put out 
of business and many of them have been dissolved. Decisions 



i6 

have been rendered in these cases which bring every great com- 
bination within the restrictions of this law. Now a New 
Freedom is to be given by legislation to labor unions to do as 
they please and farmers to form associations and combinations 
for the marketing of their products. There is no suggestion 
that those who are engaged in iron or steel or tobacco or oil, in 
hats, shoes or clothing, or printing or anything else shall be 
relieved from the beneficent restrictions of the Sherman Acts in 
which I think most of us heartily believe. But labor unions 
and farmers can club together, and by the processes which are 
so successful in protection Germany, and called cartels in free 
trade England and called combinations in protection America, 
and called trusts, can have the one in doing what it likes and 
the other in raising the price of bread and meat all the advan- 
tages of the freedom which everybody had before the Sherman 
Anti-Trust Law. Now this practical demonstration of the new 
freedom has led to more conversation everywhere than any- 
thing which has occurred for many years. It is an enlighten- 
ing, illuminating and instructing conversation. It raises that 
one topic of intense interest at all times where everybody is 
affected "Who will next receive the New Freedom?" 

Vice-President Marshall is a charming gentleman and a 
delightful speaker. I have heard him on many subjects, upon 
which he talks so well, and none better than upon brother- 
hood in Masonry, he and I being both brethren of the Thirty- 
third Degree. Two weeks ago to-night he attended the Jeffer- 
sonian banquet in New York. He there delivered an address 
which was as novel as it was original. He claimed that the 
inheritance of property from one's parents is not a natural 
or a constitutional right, but purely a privilege granted by 
statute, and so to prevent accumulations of property all that 
the Legislatures has to do is to repeal the laws of inher- 
itance, and then whatever a person acquires will go not 
to his natural heirs, but to the State. Of course, if such a 
law was passed there would be no accumulations afterwards, 
because the main incentive for saving money is to take care 
of those who are dependent upon us — in other words, our 
wives and children. There would be people so masterful and 
with such. genius in that line that they could not help making 



17 

money. If they were not to have the pride and joy and com- 
fort of its enjoyment in the benefits it would give after their 
death, they would squander it. The first line in which a man 
begins to squander money is self-indulgence; drunkenness 
would become the attendant of prosperity, and the Prohibition 
States, which are now doing fairly well in restricting the con- 
sumption of liquor, would discover that their laws were uni- 
versally nullified. The new view of life would be " let us 
eat, drink and be merry for to-morrow we die." 

This speech was delivered on Saturday night two weeks 
ago and published in the Sunday morning papers. It made 
conversation all over the United States. When I came out of 
church and met the people of all the other churches, I was 
stopped dozens of times, not to talk about the sermons which 
had been heard, but to discuss the speech of Vice-President 
Marshall. I lunched with some friends and dined with others 
that day, and both functions were prolonged far beyond the 
usual time by an animated discussion of Brother Marshall's 
deliverance. If Eugene Debs had said this, it would have 
passed unnoticed, because expected. It is the unexpected 
which inspires conversation. So from the new Vice-President 
of the United States it became a matter of interesting talk in 
every gathering, private or public. 

Well, these things have helped in bringing into activity 
again the almost lost art of conversation. Still, these subjects 
are not so fine as those which prevailed in the good old times. 
We used to long for a new novel by Dickens or Thackeray, 
and talk over the old ones until the new ones came, and then 
the new ones until others were published, until David Copper- 
field, Micawber, Captain Cuttle, Jack Bunsby, Dora, Becky 
Sharp, and Colonel Newcome were intimate members of our 
families. They inspired and radiated the home. We eagerly 
discussed Hawthorne's latest novels, and what Whittier, Low- 
ell, Emerson and Doctor Parker, Doctor Storrs or Henry 
Ward Beecher had contributed to the wisdom and enjoyment 
of the world. John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer had 
their audiences and their admirers, and the Shakespeare and 
Browning societies found opportunities in every hamlet in the 



i8 

country. T am at a loss to know why there are no writers 
of equivalent reputation and equivalent consideration a n- 
tributing now to the cordiality and camaraderie of us all. 
Why we carry the shop everywhere, and talk of either what 
we want or what we have or what the other fellow possesses 
and how he got it. It is very depressing. 

But, my friends, I do not despair. On my doctrine of 
decades I isolate this ten years. I avoid calamity howlers. 
I expel from my reading desk and my mind the preachers of 
disorder or destruction or despair. I place my trust, my hope, 
my optimism in that fine, discriminating, cordial, loving asso- 
ciation of the people with each other and of their trust in and 
courage for the rights and the liberties of all. 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Celebration at the Lexington Avenue 
Opera House of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 
Entrance upon the Ministry of the Reverend 
Henry A. Brann, D.D., Rector of St. Agnes' 
Church, May 29, 1912. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : I participated the other even- 
ing in the celebration of the fiftieth birthday of a valued friend. 
In his personality and in his achievements he eminently de- 
served the tribute which was paid him. Of his half century, 
one-half, or twenty-five years, had been passed in youth and 
preparation, so that his real work was only the half of a half 
century. But the jubilee, or the fifty years from the com- 
mencement of a career, is quite another affair. The fiftieth 
birthday is frequent, but the rounding out of a half century 
in one's career, with energies unimpaired and every prospect 
of future usefulness, is an event. 

It is a wonderful privilege to have been an active worker 
in any department of human endeavor during this half cen- 
tury. Every year of it has been an incentive to renewed 
effort, and its consummation full of inspiration and pride. 
We may look over all available records of the past, and, ex- 
cept the birth of Christ, there is no period in which so much 
has been accomplished for human happiness, for liberty, for 
prosperity, for the advancement of the individual and the 
betterment of the world. We are here to congratulate our 
friend that his activities have been abreast with these achieve- 
ments and that in his sphere he has been a factor in the best 
of these results. 

I had a conversation with Mr. Gladstone at the zenith 
of his power. He was reminiscent and, as usual, delightful. 
He said, "If I had to select from all the half centuries of 
recorded time the one in which I would have preferred to 
live and work, I would have chosen the one in which I have 
lived and worked, because it has been pre-eminently an era of 



20 



emancipation." While he did not enlarge upon this, I knew 
that he referred to religious emancipation in Great Britain, 
to the abolition of slavery in the Western Hemisphere and the 
advance of liberal ideas on the Continent. But if he could 
have lived another quarter of a century and have had 1912 as 
the end of his fifty years, how much more extraordinary would 
have been the achievements of the period, for since his time the 
advance of the world has been unparalleled. The arts, the 
inventions, the scientific discoveries, the development of re- 
sources unknown before, the new uses of electricity and of 
steam have increased beyond calculation the power of man and 
the wealth of nations. Emancipation has been more rapid 
than during the fifty years Mr. Gladstone described. There 
is no real autocracy left in the world. Many kingdoms have 
become republics, and kings, where they still seem to have a 
prominent place, are there because monarchy is held to be the 
keynote of their institutions, but the power of the monarchy 
is reduced to registering the will of the people. The extraor- 
dinary emancipation of the period since Mr. Gladstone died 
is the freeing of the mighty forces of nature which have been 
pent up in the air and in the waters and in the earth from 
time immemorial. The titanic explosions, which were cyclones 
and earthquakes and tidal waves, devastating the earth, have 
been worshiped by savage, barbarian and even civilized peoples 
in all ages as powers of evils to be placated. The fearless and 
audacious spirit of scientific investigation has penetrated the 
secrets of nature, has entered the treasure house in which were 
kept the forces of the air, of the water and the earth. Most of 
them now are made the servants and not the masters of man. 

Among the latest and most beneficent of the forces 
wrested from nature is wireless telegraphy. It has been the 
tragedy of the ocean that great ships have been lost and their 
fate a mystery never solved. But for the wireless, we would 
never have known the fate of the Titanic, not any of her pas- 
sengers ever have been saved. The wireless rescued part ; if 
man had done his duty, as he ought, would probably have 
saved all. 

But the wireless taught us another lesson. It has been 
the claim of the romancers and the idealists that the Christian 



21 



teaching of peace and good will among men has made im- 
possible a recreation in any form of the age of chivalry. 
Real heroism, they say, can only be displayed, its best qualities 
nourished and preserved upon the battlefield or in combats 
where armed men risk life and fortune for the cause in which 
they believe. But the wireless account of what occurred on 
the Titanic shows that in this Christian age there is a heroism 
purer, higher, greater than that developed in the mad passions 
which are aroused by the fury of the conflict, the sight of 
blood and the roar of battle. Mr. and Mrs. Straus refused to 
be separated. Colonel Astor and Major Butt, knowing that 
their fate was sealed, doing their best to rescue the women 
and the children, and, above all, the band, allaying the panic 
and arousing hope of eternal life, by playing, until submerged 
by the waves, "Nearer, My God To Thee!" My friends, 
there is no picture of the brave going to their death which 
equalled that which came to us on waves through the air. 

We have had twenty-seven Presidents of the United 
States, and Doctor Brann has been carrying on his work under 
the administration of twelve, or nearly half of them. He 
had on his desk in his rectory the morning after it was deliv- 
ered that gem of American oratory — President Lincoln's 
speech at Gettysburg. His prayers ascended, as is always the 
case at a new administration, for the watchful care of the 
Almighty over the life and the official acts of President Grant. 
His petitions were among the most fervent of those offered all 
over the land for the preservation of the life, after the attempt 
to assassinate him, of General Garfield. He has preserved the 
even tenor of his way, pursued without interruption his duties 
to his Church and as a citizen during the strenuous times of 
President Roosevelt. Even with the sound of battle coming 
to us to-day from all over the country, because of this most 
original and titanic force in our public life that there has been 
in these fifty years, the Doctor still has unabated faith that 
whatever happens is for his own wise purposes under the 
motto of "God doeth all things well." 

Distinguished as have been the surroundings in the many 
fields of our friend, he has been most happy in having his 
career at this particular period in his own Church. The Amer- 



22 



ican College of Rome has been for fifty years sending out 
graduates to their appointed work, and it is his privilege to 
stand at the head of that devoted body of men as first and old- 
est alumnus. 

For many, many years of the Doctor's ministry he had 
for his superior Leo XIII, who in addition to his ecclesiastical 
virtues and accomplishments was a great statesman and an 
accomplished diplomat. I had the honor of a long interview 
with him. He was a very old man and seemed physically 
exceedingly frail. I treasure his compliment to me when he 
said, "You are the President of a great railroad company em- 
ploying over thirty thousand men. The majority of them are 
of my Church and not of yours, and I am glad to greet you 
and thank you that in your administration you make no dis- 
tinction whatever between those of your faith and those of 
mine." He has been called the workingman's Pope. His con- 
versation ran upon that subject, upon the desire of his life to 
bring about better relations between capital and labor. Then 
suddenly, as if the old fire which had made him a marvellous 
preacher in his prime was flaming with original luster, he 
grasped the arms of his chair, blood came to his pallid face, 
his eyes flashed, his voice was musical, while he said, and this 
was prophetic, for there was very little of this at that time in 
the world, "The greatest menace to the welfare of the work- 
ing man and to the stability of the Church is Socialism. So- 
cialism is the denial of all authority, divine and human. With- 
out authority and without law there can be neither order nor 
protection of life or property, nor the continuance of Christian 
civilization." 

But I count, as I think our friend must, as one of the 
greatest blessings of his life that his early career in the min- 
istry was under Archbishop Hughes. Archbishop Hughes 
broke the traditions which surrounded his sacred office and 
virtually entered the diplomatic service of the government in 
the time of its "greatest need. The question of the success of 
the Union was largely dependent upon preventing interfer- 
ence by the great powers of Europe. It was known that 
these great powers at that time, controlled as they were by 
monarchical and aristocratic forces, were in favor of the Con- 



23 

federacy because they thought that in the breaking up of the 
Union there would be a check upon the spirit of republican 
and democratic ideas. The Archbishop visited France and 
other continental countries, and by his diplomatic ability was 
a great factor in holding back France and other nations from 
coming to the aid of the Southern Confederacy. 

I think among the best recollections of Doctor Brann 
must be that he returned on the same ship with the Arch- 
bishop. Certainly the discourse of the Archbishop upon his 
mission or its results upon the necessity of saving the Union 
and preserving the perpetuity of the Republic of the United 
States was the opening for the young priest of a university of 
practical patriotism and good citizenship which began when 
the ship started and he was graduated when he landed in 
New York. We all know that during the whole of his life 
since the Civil War, the good Doctor has been foremost, as 
far as his office would permit, in every effort leading to good 
government. 

The most frequent of discussions is "What is success?" 
We all understand what is meant by it for the lawyer or the 
doctor, for the banker or the merchant, for the artist or the 
youth struggling in any way for promotion. Seldom, how- 
ever, is it discussed in relation to the ministry. A successful 
minister must have qualities which would enable him to ad- 
vance in law, or in medicine, or in business, or in teaching. 
No one could build four churches, as the Doctor has done, 
free them from debt and start them successfully upon their 
career unless he was a good business man, nor avoid entan- 
glements with contractors and with the owners of the brick 
and the lumber and the stone and the lime unless he was a 
good lawyer. No one who has enjoyed the privilege can go 
through the schools which are maintained by our friend with- 
out recognizing his eminence as an organizer and an educator. 
It is the glory of the ministry that while it is one of sacrifice 
because the qualities which would make for material success 
in life or for fame in public life are concentrated solely upon 
parish work, nevertheless there are compensations which are 
granted to no other calling. 

In a remarkable letter found in the life of Cardinal New- 



24 

man, he describes his visit to St. Peter's at Rome. He says, 
"People are going and coming, talking with this, that and the 
other; in the meantime people are praying silently, others are 
kneeling before an altar taking part in a service — all this 
which is the world of worship and activity and conversation is 
going on within the walls of the Christian Church ; and," he 
said, "it is splendid, for here is the world granted a place in 
religion." 

In that description is, I think, a revelation of the secret of 
the success in his work of our friend, Doctor Brann. He has 
always recognized, and with rare diplomacy and skill has 
carried out in his mission the idea that the world has a place 
in religion. 

My friends, let us briefly sum up these fifty years. There 
pass in review the thousands of girls and boys who have been 
rescued from the slums and made good citizens, good fathers, 
good wives, good mothers. There are thousands who have 
entered the sacred bond of matrimony and under the teach- 
ings of th«r pastor have proved that marriage is not a failure, 
but the greatest blessing upon earth. There are thousands 
who have been comforted in passing from this world to the 
next and have felt because of the consolation he administered 
they were to be received with hope and joy in the great beyond. 
To-night this procession of the living and the spirits of those 
who are gone, whether present within this hall or far away 
over the earth or in the realms above, join in one anthem of 
praise and thanksgiving for the past and of prayer and hope 
for the future of our good friend. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Fourth of July Celebration of the Ameri- 
can Society of London, England, July 4, 1912. 

Mr. Chairman, my Lords and Gentlemen : It has 
devolved upon me to propose the sentiment of "The Day We 
Celebrate." I am very grateful to my lifelong friend, His 
Excellency the American Ambassador, for his tribute to my 
venerable years, and I look upon him as a very promising 
young man. (Laughter.) When he boasts of having, at his 
first ballot, voted for Abraham Lincoln, I can say I voted 
four years before for John C. Fremont, the first presidential 
candidate of our party. I got in the habit in that campaign 
of 1856 of appearing upon the platform on different occasions, 
and I have been unable to get over it for fifty-six years. Yet, 
when our Ambassador alluded so charmingly to the long linger 
which I have had on the stage, I was afraid that you and my 
friends at home might liken me to the boy who wrote a letter 
of twenty pages home from boarding school to his mother and 
closed with the P. S., "Dear Mother, please excuse my lon- 
gevity." (Laughter.) 

It has been my pleasure to attend Independence Day cele- 
brations in London during the reigns of Queen Victoria, King 
Edward VII and now to-night. On each of these occasions 
I could bring the hearty goodwill and respect of the American 
people for the late Queen, a tribute of good fellowship and 
camaraderie, continued since his boyhood visit, to the late 
King and an appreciation of his statesmanship and especially 
of his uniform and universal friendship for America and 
Americans. I can say now that these sentiments for the great 
Queen and the genial and popular King are .continued with 
hopeful prophecy to their successor, King George. (Ap- 
plause.) 

The Ambassador suggested that I report about the recent 
convention which renominated President Taft. I attended as 
a delegate the National Republican Presidential Convention at 
Chicago, leaving it with only time enough to catch the steamer 



26 

which brought me here. The daily papers, as never before, 
were filled with the reports of the proceedings of that con- 
vention and, on my sailing day, with predictions of the Demo- 
cratic gathering at Baltimore. The space left, however, was 
largely devoted to an almost hysterical advocacy of what is 
called a "sane and safe," or "safe and soundless," Fourth of 
July. To one who commenced celebrating these anniversaries 
seventy-five years ago, this seems to be a tribute to the ses- 
theticism, the dilettantism and the tenderfootism of a de- 
generate age. Fourth of July without noise is like an electrical 
display without light, or a lion with organs paralyzed when 
the time comes for a triumphant roar, or a rooster without a 
crow. All the American boys of my period, and down until 
the time when the speaking stage was removed from the 
academy and the school-room, declaimed that famous speech 
from Daniel Webster in which he put into the mouth of old 
John Adams a prophecy and an injunction for the celebration 
of the Fourth of July. I cannot recall the exact words, but it 
was about this : that Fourth of July should be celebrated for- 
ever with military and civic processions ; that its dawn should 
be greeted with the booming of artillery and the ringing of 
the church bells; its day with meetings and orations and its 
night with fire-works and illuminations. 

A famous President of the United States, who in early 
life had an almost hopeless struggle, said to me one day: "Was 
there ever a period in your career when you would have com- 
promised with the Lord for a moderate certainty and given 
up all the rest? Because that occurred to me in my struggles, 
when, if God had only been willing to make the bargain and 
given me an academy with an endowment that would assure 
me three thousand dollars a year, I would have surrendered 

all the rest." 

I wonder if any of you have tried to think of the first 
real overwhelming thrill you ever had in your life. I suppose 
most of us would connect it with the first application of the 
parental slipper, or later, in adolescence, with the first kiss. 
(Laughter.) What an American boy, properly brought up, 
would associate it with is his first independent, self-reliant 
Fourth of July. Having sat up all night in preparation as the 



27 

proud possessor of a three-pound cannon, I planted it on the 
hill by the old homestead, and when the bell from the belfry 
of the old Presbyterian Church and the cannon from Drum 
Hill announced the dawn of the Fourth of July, I touched off 
my artillery. Blistered hands, powdered cheeks, which lasted 
for months, eyebrows singed, and general demoralization 
caused by the kick of the artillery, simply placed me for a 
moment as a little boy among the soldiers who marched with 
Washington and camped at Valley Forge. (Applause.) 

Perhaps it may not be inappropriate, as future Fourths 
of July are dependent in a large measure upon the result, to 
give, as Mr. Reid suggests, a brief report of the great con- 
vention. 

In the Republican party there have been fifteen of these 
conventions, and I have attended ten, my first being in 1864 
for the second^ nomination of Abraham Lincoln. In all those 
gatherings the crowds in the galleries, of men and women from 
all parts of the country, outnumbered by ten to one the dele- 
gates on the floor. They were instinct with enthusiasm, and 
the magnetism of their ardor affected their representatives 
upon whom devolved the responsibility of nominating a candi- 
date for President. 

The cheers, lasting sometimes for half an hour and some- 
times for an hour, for Lincoln in the convention in '64, for 
Grant in the convention in '68, for Blaine and Sherman and 
Harrison and Garfield in '80, '84, '88 and '92, for McKinley 
in 1896 and again in 1900, for Roosevelt in 1904, and Roose- 
velt and Taft in 1908, were the inspirations of a lifetime. 

When I made the speech nominating Harrison for a sec- 
ond term in the Minneapolis Convention in 1892, I inad- 
vertently mentioned his opponent Blaine, and fourteen thou- 
sand people in the galleries rose and cheered, with waving 
handkerchiefs, flags and hats, for forty-five minutes, and when 
I mentioned President Harrison, for an hour, so that the 
thirty minutes' address required in its delivery nearly three 
hours! (Laughter.) 

Now the contrast. During all the scenes, and there were 
many exciting ones, among the delegates in our convention 
two weeks ago at Chicago, the mention of the historic names 



28 

of the party and of the country, like Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, 
McKinley, elicited no response whatever from the gallery, nor 
did the names of the candidates arouse enthusiasm. This 
great crowd was not angry nor sullen, it was indifferent. 

At Baltimore the proceedings were prolonged more days 
than they have been for sixty years in the Democratic party, 
and a tremendous effort, receiving great support, was made 
to prevent the votes of the large states in which great busi- 
ness is concentrated and to expel from the convention dele- 
gates who represented great business. 

What does all this mean on Independence Day? Talking 
to a distinguished writer within the last few days, he said : 
"Its parallel is to be found in the calm and mutterings of the 
storm which preceded the French revolution." But he was 
entirely wrong. There is not the slightest indication in the 
United States of a revolution. Never in our history were we 
farther removed from what might be called the spirit of the 
French revolution. The rights of the people, collectively and 
individually, were never so secure. The power of the people, 
both in the municipalities, in the states, and in the general 
government, was never so supreme. Prosperity was never so 
universal; business never so good, never so promising, and 
opportunity never so hopeful. Labor and capital, each more 
powerful than ever, are more harmonious than ever. The 
railway strike which was threatened a month ago, when, if 
it had eventuated war, for it would have been war, would have 
stopped the turning of every wheel on every railroad between 
Chicago and the remotest boundaries of Maine ; it would have 
paralyzed every industry in the Middle and the Atlantic and 
the Eastern States and brought the great cities, as well as the 
smaller ones, to starvation. But after free discussion by the 
representatives of labor and capital, it was settled by sub- 
mission to peaceful arbitration. (Applause.) 

Then, what is the matter? What is the reason for the 
lack of enthusiasm for the great names of the party or the 
statesmanship, or the policies of the past and present? Ninety- 
nine per cent, of the American people are earning their living 
and adding to their competence or their fortunes by their per- 
sonal exertions, and the other one per cent, are not neglectful 



2 9 

of civic or industrial duties. We are preeminently a busi- 
ness people. There are opportunities for the profitable in- 
vestment in new enterprises giving employment to labor and 
capital of over one hundred millions of dollars, and there is a 
hundred millions of dollars eager to enter and exploit these 
fields. But business, which ought to be represented hopefully 
in politics, has become alarmed about politicians. American 
enterprise has no fear of its own ability. It is willing to take 
every risk dependent upon its judgment, but it wishes to know 
where the line is to be drawn as to the amount of business 
which will be permitted to be conducted and as to the limits 
that may be put upon genius for affairs and national and local 
development. The only trouble with us is the mistakes by the 
politicians of both parties as to the real solid, sober temper 
of the American people. We have become the victims of spe- 
cialization, but then this is an age of specialization. I admit 
that the specialists have done wonderful things in various lines. 
The research work in the Rockefeller and Carnegie Institutes 
has done much for humanity. They have taken a common 
"yaller" dog of ignoble birth, and by grafting upon him the 
organs of canine aristocracy have created a thoroughbred which 
takes the highest prizes in the dog expositions. (Laughter.) 

They are discovering and hope to eliminate the sources 
of disease and the microbe of old age. It is said that a French 
specialist has located the microbe of old age, and that pres- 
ently we shall live forever. That, however, does not make me 
feel entirely happy when I think of a good many men I know. 
(Laughter.) Nevertheless, they are dangerous. One of the 
most eminent surgeons in the country looked me over critically 
the other day and said: "Senator, I would regard it as the 
highest honor of my professional career if I could operate 
on you for appendicitis." (Laughter.) And if I had not 
been protected he would have strapped me on the table. He 
ignored the fact that my appendix for nearly seventy-nine years 
has been performing whatever part it does perform in as 
healthy and happy a life as any American wants to live. 

By the way, one thing occurred at the convention which 
will be enjoyed by English-speaking people everywhere. There 
were two men in the gallery, next to one another, one a lum- 



30 

berman. When the New York delegation arrived, the other 
man said : "The New York delegation are all grafters and 
thieves." "Well," said the lumberman, "there is one who is 
not— Merritt." "Merritt," said the other, "why he's the Speaker 
of the House and the biggest of the lot." Said the lumber- 
man : "If you'll step outside we will argue that question, and 
I think I can convince you that you are wrong." "Right," 
said the other, and they went outside. One of them gave the 
policeman five dollars to see it was a fair fight, and when 
the ambulance was carrying the slanderer of Speaker Merritt 
to the hospital, he poked his head over the dashboard and said : 
"Stranger, Merritt is an honest man." (Loud laughter.) 

I admire the specialists in discovery who risk their lives 
to find the North or the South Pole, but I think the world 
gains more on the material side which adds to the distribution 
of the products of its labor and general happiness by the open- 
ing, the day before yesterday, of the railway station on the 
site of the palace of Haroun-al-Raschid at Bagdad. We can 
still let the children lie awake or dream frightful dreams about 
the Arabian Nights, but the railway in developing new regions 
gives opportunity for those children, as the world becomes 
increasingly populated, to add to civilization and the better 
living of all races. 

Perhaps the practical value of finding that mythical flag- 
staff called the North Pole, which has been the dream of dis- 
coverers for a century, was best expressed by a quarrel which 
I heard in Washington between two very charming women — 
one an ardent partisan of Dr. Cook and the other of Com- 
modore Peary. Cook's claim had received a very black eye, 
while Peary's seemed fully established, when the defeated lady 
remarked, with disgust : "Well, anyhow, Dr. Cook is a gentle- 
man and a liar, but Peary is neither." (Laughter.) 

We have a new school of politics with us which has been 
making very rapid strides in the last few years and is repre- 
sented in both political parties. It appeals to the unrest which 
is common all over the world. In Europe it is the unrest of 
labor; in China it is the awakening of the possibilities of liberty 
caused by the return of the students from Western civilization. 
With us in the United States it exists, but its definition is diffi- 



3i 

cult. The agitators of the new school say to a very busy peo- 
ple absorbed in their ordinary affairs and giving only quad- 
rennially close attention to politics : "You are deprived of your 
liberties. We will see that they are restored to you. You 
in your elective capacity through the ballot box should perform 
the functions of President and courts and congresses and 
legislatures and municipal bodies. You should initiate laws 
without the bother of representatives to prepare and perfect 
them. You should have the power. You should do away with 
the limitations which enable a decision of the court to stand 
that you don't like, or a judge to sit on the bench who is un- 
popular." These hairtrigger philosophers do not know that 
every one of these schemes was thoroughly thrashed out by 
those extraordinary and levelheaded men who framed the 
Constitution of the United States. They had before them 
the example of a thousand years of history of these experi- 
ments and their purpose was to form a government of orderly 
liberty, to prevent the mad passion of the hour crystallizing 
into dangerous legislation or revolutionary activities. They 
placed the common law above Judge Lynch. The briefest but 
the finest tribute ever paid to the old Constitution was by Mr. 
Gladstone when he said that it was the greatest instrument 
ever created at a single session by the mind of man. 

During the 125 years since it was adopted the whole 
world has changed its forms of government, and each change 
has been towards, as if drawn by a magnet, the liberties se- 
cured by that old Constitution of the United States. (Ap- 
plause.) 

The impatient spirit of the new age — the same in China 
as it is with us — was expressed by the Chinese reformer who 
called upon an American diplomat at eleven o'clock in the 
morning and said: "Excuse me if I am somewhat in a 
hurry, because I have to prepare a constitution for our coun- 
try to be submitted to the Conclave at two." 

The whole spirit of our Constitution, which is now assailed 
by the Initiative, the Referendum and the Recall, is Represen- 
tative Government — the delegation by a busy people of the 
powers of government to their own chosen representatives who, 
by frequent elections, are subjected and again subjected to a 



32 

revision of their work. Above all, the original and yet funda- 
mental idea of American liberty, which came from that con- 
vention and^into the Constitution, was that there should be 
an independent judiciary. The Supreme Court of the United 
States has so interpreted the broad principles of the Consti- 
tution and so checked the effort of popular passion to subvert 
it that the government under a written Constitution, which 
was sufficient for three millions of people scattered along 
the Atlantic sea coast at its beginning, is found sufficient to- 
day for one hundred millions, peopling and developing a con- 
tinent. 

An English journalist said to me yesterday : "How about 
Canada?" On this Fourth of July I can say for the American 
people: We are glad of the relations so mutually prosperous 
that exist between Canada and the United States. We are 
glad of the growing prosperity of Canada, but the American 
people do not want another inch of territory more than they 
have now anywhere in the world. (Applause.) The Phili- 
pinos wanting independence and our navy to protect them in 
doing what they like, the Porto Ricans wanting immediate 
citizenship and then statehood, and Cuba not knowing what 
it wants, but holding us responsible, gives all the trouble out- 
side of our own boundaries which we desire. (Laughter.) 

A little story, and a new one, which happily illustrates 
that representative government still prevails in the United 
States, came to me the other day. The most promising of 
the candidates for Congress before the Congressional Con- 
vention had selected a friend to make the speech presenting 
his name. When the time came for nominations he was so 
nervous and the preliminary proceedings so long that he went 
out frequently for liquid refreshment. While he was absent 
his friends found a more eloquent advocate to present his 
name. When he returned this stranger, to him, was describ- 
ing in glowing terms the qualifications of his candidate. The 
candidate, not knowing it was himself who was presented, 
turned to his friend whom he thought was to make the nomi- 
nating speech and said: "For heaven's sake, when that man 
sits down withdraw my name. If there is any cuss before this 
convention as a candidate who possesses the qualifications 



33 

which this speaker is describing, I am not in his class." 
(Laughter.) 

Well, gentlemen, I have celebrated the Fourth of July 
many and many a time at home and in different parts of our 
country. I graduated on the 26th of June, 1856, from Yale 
and delivered the oration at Peekskill on the fourth of July, 
and I have been at it ever since. I have joined in the cele- 
bration in many countries of Europe and several times upon 
the sea, but it is peculiarly appropriate and never more ap- 
propriate than now, that this celebration should be in the 
great metropolis of the British Empire. It emphasizes the 
perpetuity of the friendship which now exists and always will 
exist between the British Empire and the United States. It 
emphasizes the fact that every difference which could possibly 
lead to trouble between us has been settled through the medium 
of diplomacy and arbitration. It emphasizes the fact that each 
is proud of the growth, the strength, the power and develop- 
ment of the other. It emphasizes the fact that there is a great 
mission in this world for peace and humanity and that this 
mission is largely in the custody of English-speaking peoples. 
(Loud applause.) 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Annual Banquet Celebrating the 144th 
Anniversary of the Chamber of Commerce, Held 
at Waldorf-Astoria, November 21, 1912. 

President Claflin in introducing Senator Depew said: 
"Our final toast to-night is 'Theory and Experience.' The 
response will be by an old friend, an ever youthful friend, one 
whose youth seems perennial even as that of the Chamber 
itself. We have loved him and honored him for years and we 
welcome him to-night with joy — the Honorable Chauncey M. 
Depew." (Applause.) 
Mr. Depew : 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been 
introduced many times in the course of my long career, but 
this is the first time it has ever been suggested that my age 
was coeval with the one hundred and forty-four years of the 
Chamber of Commerce. (Laughter.) 

Of those years the present year of 1912 is one of the 
most important and interesting. We cover a wide field, and 
it is our duty to consider everything which affects our foreign 
and domestic commerce and business generally. 

Three events of the highest importance are uppermost in 
our minds — this terrific war between the Balkans and Greece, 
on the one hand, and Turkey on the other, which threatens 
to involve the great powers and will certainly change the map 
of Europe; next, the International Congress and Boards of 
Trade of most of the commercial cities of the world who held 
their sessions in our country and were the guests of this 
Chamber; and, lastly, the government of the United States 
for the third time in fifty-six years passing into the hands of 
the Democratic party. 

All the power and influence of the Chamber of Commerce 
of New York have been given to the efforts, so strenuously 
made in recent years, to promote the peace of the world. Until 
within a few months it seemed as if the peace movement had 
made more progress than in all preceding time, and the 



36 

prospects of early success were very great. Suddenly a war 
breaks out which proves how unstable are the relations be- 
tween nations. A savage contest, which was decided by battle 
for the Turks six hundred years ago, is suddenly renewed 
after six centuries in one of the bloodiest wars of modern 
times. This war illustrates how near the nations are at all 
times to a sudden and violent appeal for the settlement of 
their difficulties and the gratification of their passion, by the 
arbitrament of the sword. 

An American woman writes that she stood beside King 
Nicholas of Montenegro when he gave the order for his son 
to fire the cannon, the shell from which exploded soon after 
in the camp of the Turks on the other side of the valley. 
Within four weeks fifty thousand men were dead or wounded. 
The victorious hosts were battling with their defeated but 
defiant and stubborn enemies day after day, the armies of all 
countries of Europe were mobilizing and their navies put in 
active commission, and the only barrier to the most terrific 
and destructive war of modern times was the will and power 
of the Emperor of Germany and the Premier of Great Britain. 
The exchanges and the markets of Europe and Asia were 
facing possibilities and experiencing revoluntionary changes 
which had not occurred since the time of the first Napoleon. 
It is within recent recollection of everybody here present that 
the United States became a world power and as such inter- 
ested in this revolution. Nothing illustrates our happy situa- 
tion better than that while we are in it we are not of it. If 
the Emperor and the Premier were unable either to prevent 
others or keep their own countries out of the conflict, happily 
nothing could drag us into it. But this situation has a preg- 
nant lesson for us. It shows that, after all has been done and 
is being done for peace between nations, the unexpected may 
happen at any time. It demonstrates that for our peace, for 
our commerce, for the protection of our coasts and main- 
tenance of our proper position in the world without war, our 
fleet should be kept up to a standard adequate to the necessity 
of any situation in which we may be placed. (Applause.) 

The meeting in our country of the commercial represen- 
tatives of all nations was one of the agencies for peace, but 



37 

it also demonstrated that we are to be more and more de- 
pendent as years go by upon our share in the commerce of 
the world. While government farms were plenty and free 
for the settler, we could live happily in continental isolation, 
but now the situation is changed. From almost purely agri- 
cultural we have become more largely a manufacturing people. 
A gathering of the representatives of all the activities and in- 
dustries of Europe within our borders was not only a revela- 
tion to them, but a university for commercial education to 
us. Their amazement and interest were not so much as to the 
size and development and resources of our country as to our 
wonderful internal commerce. Here was the greatest market 
in the world. Here were more money and more material ex- 
changed than in almost all the rest of the world put together. 
Here was an internal commerce between the states which was 
more than double that of their foreign commerce with each 
other and with all the rest of the world. I met many of them, 
and their eagerness to share in the commercial possibilities of 
our forty-eight states amounted almost to hysteria. (Laughter 
and applause.) 

A question of supreme importance, and one in which this 
Chamber is most deeply interested, is how far and on what 
terms and on what basis our doors shall be thrown open. Shall 
this mighty question be decided by theory or by experience? 
We are all glad, however, to see our visitors and there is no 
doubt but that the results will be beneficial to us all. 

A little incident occurred recently to me which shows that 
after all we are close together. The sense of humor and its 
development is one of the tests of human relationship. When 
I was in London last summer a successful banker said to me, 
"How was the weather on the continent this summer?" "Well," 
I said, "it was so cold in the hottest place in France that I 
had to put a spirit lamp under the bulb of the thermometer 
to raise it to sixty Fahrenheit." He said, "Just fancy." 
(Laughter.) 

I was in Boston a few weeks since, and on our way in 
the taxi to the hotel we passed by the Common where the 
Italians were celebrating some festival with fireworks and 
bombs. A well-known citizen of Boston who met me said. 



38 

"You have not been to our city recently?" I said, "No, but 
the cordiality of our reception here to-night was exceedingly 
gratifying to me and touched me very deeply, with the fire- 
works illuminating the sky and the exploding bombs filling 
the air on our arrival." He said, "I assure you, sir, that they 
were not for you at all." (Laughter.) 

In these two instances we see the link which Gladstone 
so happily mentioned of the tie that binds us with our kin 
across the sea. (Laughter.) 

Last week the papers recorded that a lady arrived at 
Joplin, Mo., who was 113 years of age, and she was accom- 
panied by her youngest son who was 85. She remarked, as 
a reason for her visit, that neither she nor any of her family 
had ever seen a railroad, a trolley car, an electric light, or a 
moving picture show. Inquired of as to the rest of her family, 
she said that she had left her eldest son at home to take care 
of the other children, her oldest being 95. (Laughter.) Now, 
I am not so old as this good lady, and unlike her I have had 
some experience in the world. I closed a vigorous campaign 
in 1856, during which I had for three months made the plat- 
form ring with eloquence for Fremont and freedom, to wake 
up the morning after election to the victory of Buchanan 
Buchanan's administration and its disastrous results were the 
inspiration of political oratory and Republican party success 
for many a year, but looking back calmly over the intervening 
years and recalling the situation as it was at that period, I 
think that we have done injustice to President James Buchanan. 
He was a statesman fully capable of the duties of Chief Mag- 
istrate in normal times, but unequal to them in periods of 
revolution. As in the East, the forces of the Crescent and 
the Cross, which have been facing one another for six hun- 
dred years, have now come to settlement by arms which all 
the powers of the world could not stop, so at that time the 
battle of the ages between freedom and slavery had reached 
its culmination. Buchanan did the best he could, with his 
lights, to avert the catastrophe, but it was not in human 
power to do it. 

In 1892 the Democratic party came into power with 
Grover Cleveland as President. I knew Cleveland both at 



39 

the bar and as President. I offered him the attorneyship of 
the New York Central Railroad at Buffalo, which included 
the large business at that time of the western terminal of 
the New York Central lines, and told him that he could retain 
his own business at the same time, and that his income would 
be more than doubled by the assumption of the post. His 
answer convinced me that he was a very strong and a very 
remarkable man. He said, "I am now earning enough for 
my needs, and no amount of money could tempt me to add to 
the hours of my work or the diminution of the days of my 
play." He always claimed that the difficulties of his admin- 
istration were two things: one that he was the heir of the 
financial and industrial disturbance which had grown out of the 
surrender of the country to the silver craze; the other that 
he was betrayed in his policies by a minority of his own party 
sufficiently strong to prevent his carrying out what he believed 
would, in practice, have been for the best interest of the 
country. However, as things go in a country which is gov- 
erned by parties, every administration is judged by its results 
and not by its intentions. Nevertheless, I believe that it is 
already the calm judgment of history that one of the ablest 
and certainly one of the most courageous of the Presidents of 
the United States was Grover Cleveland. (Applause.) 

Now Governor Wilson enters upon the Presidency with 
none of the difficulties which surrounded Buchanan and none 
of the handicaps which troubled Cleveland. The political 
sea was never so calm and the political skies were never so 
propitious. In the midst of war we are at peace with all the 
world with no dangers threatening from abroad. Our inter- 
nal conditions are as good if not better than they have ever 
been. A "bumper" crop, unequalled in the history of our 
harvests, is to add to our national and individual wealth. Our 
internal trade is of unequalled volume, and with the move- 
ment of this crop to be largely increased. The mill and the 
furnace are running on full time. Labor was never so fully 
employed, nor with wages so high. The farm was never 
receiving such returns. Our exports and imports were never 
so large and the balance of trade in our favor runs into the 
millions of dollars. Our only scarcity is of labor in many of 



40 

our industrial centers. There never was a better time when 
practical experiments with long-cherished theories could be 
carried out with less danger or with more benefit, if the 
theories are correct. (Applause.) 

The mission of the hour seems to be to reduce the high 
cost of living, without lessening the opportunities for earn- 
ing a living. The experimenters must bear carefully in mind 
the lesson taught by the well-known epitaph upon the tomb- 
stone in the country churchyard, "I was well. I wanted to 
be better. I took physic and here I am." (Laughter.) 

While I belong to the opposite school of economic prin- 
ciples from that of the successful party, I do not see how it 
is possible for that party to fail to try the merits of its prin- 
ciples, its platform and its promises. We hear much in the 
vocabulary of politics of the mandate of the people. Taft and 
Roosevelt stood for a tariff for protection and Wilson for a 
tariff for revenue only. The combined vote for Taft and 
Roosevelt is a million and a half more than that for W'ilson. 
Nevertheless, under our system of government, by which 
pluralities and not majorities are required, the Baltimore plat- 
form and its advocates are in the possession of every branch 
of the government and the mandate is to carry out their 
promises. All business men, and I am looking at these ques- 
tions now only from the business standpoint, insist that the 
work shall be begun at the earliest possible moment and fin- 
ished in the quickest possible time. The trained American 
business mind fears no conditions when factors are thor- 
oughly understood. The genius of American enterprise, the 
optimism of the American spirit, the confidence in American 
judgment, have pulled us through many a panic, repaired the 
losses of the troublous times, and placed our business again 
upon firm foundations, and with prospering and prosperous 
conditions. The only one thing which the American business 
man cannot meet is uncertainty. The business men of the 
country pulled us triumphantly through the depression of '95 
and '96, and a few of the captains of industry, placing patri- 
otically at the service of their country their reputations, their 
acknowledged ability and their fortunes, pulled us safely 
through the panic of 1907. But in both these instances con- 



4i 

ditions were known. There were no uncertainties about the 
factors. The only question was the existence of ability to 
meet them. With the results of the election, the danger to 
the judiciary and the recall of the judges has ceased to be a 
question. It will continue to exist probably in that marvelous 
city of Seattle as an object lesson. There it takes a majority 
to elect a mayor, but a small per cent, can put him on the recall. 
The result is that the highest office of that municipality is a 
greased plank. (Laughter.) It takes a majority to put the 
citizen to the top and less than a quarter of the vote may 
pull him down to the bottom, and the procession goes merrily 
on for the gaity of nations and the booming of Seattle. 

President Wilson in numberless speeches has felicitously 
put the remedies which he proposed instead of the drastic ones 
which are declared in his platform. He repeats before and 
after election, and we know that he believes what he says, 
that he can take all the evils there are in the tariff out with- 
out interfering with the business of the country, and he can 
suppress the evils there are in the trusts without disturbing 
labor or capital. I am sure that all of us, of all parties, wish 
him Godspeed, and we of all parties trust that theory may be 
so chastened by experience, and experience so liberalized by 
theory that the net results of the measures and policies of the 
incoming administration will be the continuance and the im- 
provement of the happy business conditions of the country in 
which we rejoice to-night. (Loud Applause.) 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Exercises at the Republican Club of New 
York, in Memory of the late James S. Sherman, 
Vice-President of the United States, Sunday, 
November 24, 1912. 

Mr. Chairman and Friends: We all loved Jim Sher- 
man. I never knew any man who was so long in public life, 
with the jealousies and animosities which are incident to such 
a career, who enjoyed to such an unusual degree the affection 
of his fellow citizens of both parties. His career may be one 
of the few exceptions to the rule that a man is not without 
honor except in his own country. For twenty-two years his 
neighbors who knew him best kept returning him to the House 
of Representatives, and doubtless this tribute would have been 
paid him so long as he lived had he not been promoted to the 
Vice-Presidency, the second office in the gift of the people 
of the United States. Those who knew him intimately, and 
they hailed from every State and Territory, never addressed 
him as "Congressman Sherman" or "Vice-President Sherman," 
but they all came under the influence of that irresistible man- 
ner of his which made one feel that there was established 
with the Congressman or the Vice-President a most chummy 
relation which only exists among college classmates. He 
was the most popular undergraduate at Hamilton College dur- 
ing his college course, and he carried with him through life 
the youthful feeling of cordiality, of generosity, or unshaken 
confidence in his fellows, which kept enlarging as he grew older 
into cordial intimacy and affection which with most students 
end with graduation. 

But we must, on an occasion like this, look beyond the 
personal characteristics of our friend in the effort to form an 
estimate of what gave him his promotion and distinction in 
public life; what were the ambitions by which he secured so 
large a degree of the confidence and esteem of the American 
people. Environment and heredity have most to do in the 
formation of character and in the making of a career. He 



44 

had an heredity which molded his mind and predestined his 
career. But he lived also all his life in an environment which 
taught freedom and crystallized his opinions upon public ques- 
tions. He was born and passed his whole life in one neigh- 
borhood, which is part of that remarkable valley of the Mo- 
hawk that extends from Albany to Buffalo. He had seen 
settlements for manufacture start upon those fertile farms and 
then become prosperous villages and grow into important cities. 
He had seen these manufacturing centers constantly expand- 
ing in the value of their output, in the enlargement of their 
facilities, in the extension of their markets, in the increase of 
population and in the general and extraordinary prosperity. 
All this had happened under his eye while he was progressing 
from boyhood to youth, from youth to manhood and from 
manhood to middle age. He had seen the wonderful effects 
of the development of water power, which had created happy 
communities out of what had been before a wilderness. His 
studies naturally led to an inquiry into the sources of this de- 
velopment which had attracted the attention not only of the 
people of the State, but of the whole country. As his investi- 
gations and observations extended he became firmly convinced 
that these were all due to a policy of government, and that 
that policy was the protection of the American manufacturer 
and giving him so far as possible the possession of the Ameri- 
can market. In his travels abroad and in his close examina- 
tion of conditions in other countries he came to the conclusion, 
so fixed in his mind that it amounted to a religion, that the 
American market was the best market in the world and the 
largest, that the stability of our institutions and American 
citizenship of a high type depended upon so protecting that 
market for American labor and capital that competition with 
conditions so different in other highly organized industrial na- 
tions should not be able to deteriorate the standard of Ameri- 
can wages and living. This was the fundamental principle 
of all his political career and the active motive of his life. 
At a time when that idea had become so unpopular with a 
percentage of the press of the United States, he supported it, 
imperiling his renomination for the Vice-Presidency, which he 
intensely desired, both for the honor, and because it would 



45 

make him the only one in the long line of Vice-Presidents 
to whom that honor had come, by emphatically stating in his 
speech of acceptance and in a speech preceding his nomina- 
tion his views upon this question in a way which his associates 
and friends thought unnecessary, but he was determined that 
if re-elected the people of the United States should be in no 
doubt as to what he regarded as essential to the prosperity and 
future of the country. 

His speech of acceptance and a message given later in the 
canvass are among the notable incidents in our political his- 
tory of a man when the tide is turning otherwise against his 
opinions daring to risk everything rather than have his country- 
men mistaken as to his views and policies which he would, if 
possible, carry out. 

He died as he had lived and worked in the advocacy of 
these industrial policies. 

The period of his service in Congress of twenty-two 
years was for our financial and industrial stability among 
the most critical in our history. With the close of the Civil 
War, we encountered all the difficulties of the formation of 
a new government. New conditions arose which had never 
existed before. The problem of the accumulation of great 
wealth and its proper distribution, so far as legislation could 
legitimately affect it, was an urgent problem. The creation 
of great corporations and their combination into greater ones, 
necessitated by competition and the need of economy in ad- 
ministration, presented other problems. The sectional diffi- 
culty had been settled, but these questions which grew out 
of extraordinary prosperity were the ones to be solved. It 
was a period of experiment from the day he entered Congress 
until he took the office of Vice-President, and when the crucial 
period arrived during the administration of President Cleve- 
land for a trial of a new experiment different from the one in 
which he believed he had reached a place among the leaders 
of the House of Representatives. It is the peculiarity of all 
representative bodies and of every association that they are 
governed by leaders. The average man may rise and reach 
Congress because he is a leader in his locality, but when he 
comes to exercise the larger duties which devolve upon him 



46 

as a Representative, he finds it is easier to have others in whom 
he has confidence do his thinking than to do it himself, because 
with most men the most difficult task, the hardest work in 
the world and the most tiresome is to think and to think hard. 

During this period about six men led the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and they were led in their turn by two very re- 
markable and masterful statesmen, Speaker Reed and Speaker 
Cannon. Mr. Sherman was one of this group during all this 
critical time, and up to the period of his promotion from the 
House of Representatives to the Vice-Presidency, he was a 
leader in the great fight against the effort to make silver the 
standard of value, either by its own merit or by some standard 
of union with gold, and also of the experiment with President 
Cleveland, so earnestly attempted, of getting rid of the prin- 
ciple of the protection of American industry and reducing 
the tariff to a revenue basis. 

After the disastrous panic from 1894 to 1896 he was in- 
timately associated with McKinley and with Dingley in chang- 
ing the legislation upon this question, and his constructive 
ability was largely instrumental in the framing of what was 
known as the Dingley Tariff Bill, which reversed the policy 
of the preceding administration and placed the country again 
upon a high protective basis. There followed for about eight 
years a development of our national resources, the extension 
of our railway systems, the addition to our industrial output, 
the settlement of new lands, the government of new territories, 
and the further accumulation of power in corporations and 
individuals which led to almost revolutionary legislation and 
a period of great unrest in the public mind. Everyone who 
shared in this prosperity came to believe, under the influence 
of a remarkable agitation in powerful sections of the press 
and many political agitators, that while they were better off 
than ever before they had not received their full share of this 
extraordinary development of prosperity and wealth. So 
strong and deep-seated was this conviction of a wrong which 
could not be accurately defined, that nearly every public man 
in the country saw how much his popularity could be increased 
and how much it depended upon adding fuel to the fire. The 
most remarkable part of our friend's career is the manner and 



47 

the courage with which he resisted these temptations. No one 
in public life knew better the trend of current opinion, and 
no one was more capable of becoming one of its leaders or 
exponents. He had, however, no sympathy whatever with 
destructive policies of any kind. His mind was constructive 
and his ineradicable optimism made him cling persistently to 
the policies and motives which he believed had produced the 
conditions in the country in which all rejoiced, though they 
might not think they had got their share. He was an individ- 
ualist. He had worked out his own career, with no advan- 
tageous surroundings or help, and he believed everyone could 
do the same according to his abilities. He admired intensely 
the man who had succeeded far greater than himself in politics 
or in business, but at the same time he believed that they 
deserved what they had won, and that it was due to remark- 
able ability, with the free opportunities that could only come 
where opportunities were so free as existed in the United 
States. Envy had no place in his composition. He was pre- 
eminently what is known as a stand-patter and proud of it. 
He lost no opportunity upon the platform or in the press of 
acquainting his fellow citizens with his views. There might 
be doubt about others, Senators and Congressmen might waver, 
candidates might sit upon the fence or straddle it, but no one 
ever doubted where could always be found the Vice-President. 
Scores of able men in public life who were equally courageous 
during this craze were driven out and consigned to private 
life. It is a marvel how he retained his hold and popularity. 
But the same qualities which made his countrymen call him 
"Sunny Jim," dissipated all enmity and disarmed opposition. 
It is most remarkable that at this peculiar and critical juncture 
such a man could have won without opposition this coveted 
honor of the second nomination to the second highest office 
in the gift of the people. 

Now, my friends, what is a stand-patter anyway? He 
is never praised, but generaly abused. He is attacked as an 
obstructionist. He is said to stand in the way of progress and 
to be the enemy of reform. But an intelligent and courageous 
stand-patter is a wise reformer who does not believe that all 
change is reform. He is a beneficent progressive who be- 



48 

lieves that progress is the law of nations and of individuals, 
but along demonstrated lines, and not either by excursions into 
the unknown or the repetition of experiments which have 
proved failures wherever tried. 

I have spoken of heredity as influencing character, and 
the stand-patism in our friend came from the strain of Puri- 
tanism which he inherited from old Captain John Sherman of 
Cromwell's Army, who was his ancestor as well as mine, and 
who came over, because of his faith which he would not sur- 
render, among the early Puritans of Massachusetts. That 
Puritan strain kept him firm in the faith, both in speech and 
in practice, and while he had become to an extraordinary 
degree, unlike his ancestor, one of the most genial, companion- 
able and lovable of men, nevertheless, like his ancestor, he 
would have gone to the stake for a dogma in religion or into 
obscurity for a principle in politics. 

Lincoln was a stand-patter in his time. He resisted all 
the passionate and violent forces of his day. The Abolitionists, 
led by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, had no 
faith in him as a candidate for the Presidency, while, after 
he became President, it was only because he was the most 
remarkable man of his time that he was able to resist the radi- 
cal assaults of Senator Wade and Thaddeus Stevens in Con- 
gress and Horace Greeley in the press. The most remarkable 
stand-patism in Mr. Lincoln's administration was his resistance 
for nearly three years of a determination so strong to make 
him issue his Emancipation Proclamation that impeachment 
was freely discussed among the more advanced of the radicals. 

I have all my life been a close observer of legislation, 
from early participation as a member of the Legislature and 
subsequent study and twelve years in the United States Senate. 
I was in the Legislature of our State fifty-one years ago. Dur- 
ing my second term I was for one session of the Legislature, 
while the Speaker was unable to perform his duty, the Acting 
Speaker of the New York Assembly. The House was evenly 
divided between both parties. The position of Speaker was 
a most difficult one, and it gave me an interest in the office 
and an understanding of its requirements which have lasted 
me through life. I have an exceeding admiration for anybody 



1 
49. 

who can acceptably perform the duties of the presiding officer 
of a deliberative body. Such a place requires more tact, skill, 
quick judgment and instantaneous decision than any other place 
in public life. The presiding officer must have the support 
not only of his political friends, but he must enjoy the con- 
fidence of his political enemies, because of his fairness and 
judicial temperament, and he must possess almost the temper 
of an angel. 

The greatest Speakers I have ever known, and I had the 
opportunity of knowing much of them, were James G. Blaine 
and Thomas B. Reed. They had not only an acquired talent, 
but a positive genius for this office, but they lacked the one 
essential which made the success of Sherman. Reed raised 
fierce and violent antagonisms so passionate that if he had 
not had a great political majority with him, he could not have 
held his place. Blaine had geniality to a remarkable degree, 
but he failed to have that hold upon his political opponents 
by that indescribable college chumminess which characterized 
Sherman's relations with all men. 

In the Senate we have no rules. Mr. Sherman had been 
chosen by different Speakers in the House of Representatives 
to act in their place when they left the chair and to preside 
over the Committee of the Whole. The House is governed 
by a collection of rules which are very rigid and a line of 
precedents which fills volumes. It was a most difficult thing 
for Mr. Sherman to be taken from a place like that to preside 
over a body which is governed practically by no rules whatever, 
but is a rule unto itself. Senators, especially the older ones, 
resent any effort on the part of the chair to curb their wan- 
derings or the carrying out of their own, sometimes very un- 
regulated, wills. One of the strongest men in the Senate, as 
well as one of the most quarrelsome, took a position, was called 
to order and the Vice-President decided against him. The Sen- 
ator instantly declared that the independence of the Senate had 
been invaded by the Vice-President, who was not a member of 
the Senate, but only its Constitutional presiding officer; that 
he had no right to use a position which was largely one of cour- 
tesy to violate the traditions of the most august body in the 
world and deny, or attempt to deny, to a Senator the rights to 



So 

which every Senatoi- was entitled. It was a personal attack; 
it was a bitter one. The scene was dramatic. The situation 
was very tense. Most presiding officers would have lost their 
temper, or at least shown heat. It was a studied effort to 
humiliate the Vice-President. Sherman's attitude was perfect. 
There was not the slightest indication in his manner or speech 
that the personal element was in his thought. He was the pre- 
siding officer personified. With perfect calmness, good humor 
and dignity, he stated the case to a breathless Senate. He did 
it so clearly and convincingly that the Senate sat down upon 
the tumultuous Senator, and Sherman's decisions were never 
after questioned. 

The study of Vice-Presidents has been to me always an in- 
teresting one. I knew Mr. Hamlin, the Vice-President during 
Mr. Lincoln's first term, and all of them since. The Vice-Presi- 
dency is not an ideal position. It was placed in the Constitu- 
tion to provide an heir to the Presidency. Curiously enough 
the f ramers of the Constitution never looked to the contingency 
of both President and Vice-President dying. That has been 
remedied only within recent years. In seeking to find some 
duties for the Vice-President, it was finally decided to make 
him the presiding officer of the Senate, with no power except 
to vote when there was a tie. It requires a statesman of un- 
usual gifts to sustain with dignity this position, and have no 
portion of the power which apparently should belong to the 
second highest office in the country. A father encourages his 
son and heir to prepare himself for his place and the admin- 
istration of his estate, but Presidents want to succeed them- 
selves for at least one term and resent any prominence or popu- 
larity which might make a Vice-President a competitor. So 
Presidents are almost always jealous of the Vice-President, 
and keep him at a distance. They rarely want his advice, and 
they do not want him to share in any way in the responsibilities 
or in the fame of the acts of the administration. This is not 
peculiar to our Presidents. I have known the heirs to the 
throne of several countries in Europe. There is no position 
so difficult. The sovereign is never on good terms with his 
heir. The older the sovereign grows the more distasteful be- 
comes the activities of the son who is to be his successor. It 



5i 

requires the rarest tact and forbearance for the son to keep 
even on good social relations with his father, the Emperor 
or the King, or his mother, the Queen. I remember, because 
I knew him so well, the difficulties which surrounded the late 
King Edward in this respect. His mother was a most master- 
ful and capable ruler, but as she grew older she became more 
jealous of the prerogatives of the throne. Her son for a 
quarter of a century was old enough and capable of being King, 
and it is one of the highest tributes to his diplomatic ability that 
he could have considerable influence and still so adjust himself 
to the situation as not to arouse the jealousies of his mother. 
Presidents do not welcome Vice-Presidents to Cabinet con- 
sultations or conferences at the White House. Nothing is so 
disturbing, I might almost say offensive, to a President as to 
have it generally understood that some measure of adminis- 
tration, some suggestion to the Congress, some policy enunci- 
ated, came from the Vice-President. It has been said that the 
only exception to this rule was Hobart. Mr. Hobart was a 
most agreeable gentleman, with wonderful tact and ability of 
self-effacement, while McKinley, on the other hand, was one 
of the most sweet tempered and amiable of men. Undoubtedly 
Mr. Hobart was oftener in the White House and in consulta- 
tion with the President than any of his predecessors, but when 
this fact became exaggerated in the press into a common state- 
ment that the Vice-President was consulted on all questions 
and his advice in a measure potential, it so annoyed the Presi- 
dent that it would not have been long before this cordial rela- 
tion was terminated. Sherman had been in Congress through 
many administrations and thoroughly understood this situation. 
He never attempted in any way to influence or direct the ad- 
ministration of President Taft. He was always ready for con- 
sultation, but never let it be known that he had been consulted. 
If a conference had occurred where his view had been ac- 
cepted, he would have been the first to assert, if the question 
had been raised, that the conclusions arrived at were the final 
judgment of the President himself. 

Mr. Sherman enjoyed life in every phase. He had the 
rarest of social gifts. But his popularity was not dependent 
upon these. He was an indefatigable worker for his party 



52 

or for his friends, but the hold which he had upon all who knew 
him was not dependent upon these. Everyone who knew him 
at all knew the wonderful fidelity, persistence and strength of 
his friendships. He would go farther and risk more to be- 
iriend a friend in whom he believed, but who was for the 
moment under a cloud, than almost any man in public life. 
The steadfastness which characterized his adherence to his po- 
litical opinions was equally strong in his personal relations. 
By reason of these exceptional qualities, he has joined the 
majority regarded and mourned by a multitude of friends. 
But beyond this generation he will live. There are two kinds 
of men who rise to distinction : one is the genius who is gov- 
erned by no rules, the other is the man who is governed by 
rules the same as others, but somehow he is exceptional. Pre- 
cisely what makes him exceptional it is difficult to discover. 
Among his friends are many who are as able and as cultured, 
whose character is as high, and whose work is as good, and 
yet in a way which they could not explain he is their superior. 
In other words, he is an exceptional man. 

Mr. Sherman was one of the finest representatives of this 
class. He knew how to do or to say the right thing at the right 
time. He knew how to differ with others, and to differ radi- 
cally, and at the same time retain a whole-hearted and cordial 
relationship even with those who could not agree with him. 
It was his gift to have the confidence in a rare degree of those 
who differed with him because they never distrusted him. His 
career will always be a bright one in the history of our State, 
and in the story of our Vice-Presidents he will always hold a 
unique and distinguished place. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Luncheon of the New York State Society 
of the Cincinnati, at the Metropolitan Club, No- 
vember 25, 1912, in Celebration of the Evacua- 
tion of New York by the British Army, November 
25, 1783. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : Critics of our ancient 
and honorable Society say that we exist for no other purpose 
than to perpetuate, on the principle of heredity, the founders 
of our organization. This meeting is ample refutation of such 
a charge. The educational value of celebrating, by appro- 
priate service, the leading events of the Revolutionary War 
by annual meetings on their natal day cannot be overestimated. 
One of the defects of our school system is its failure to em- 
phasize the foundation of the Republic, the principles which 
have been won by the success of the Revolutionary War and 
the names and the merits of founders and the principles of 
the Constitution. 

There is no more picturesque event in our annals than 
the evacuation of this country by the British Army after the 
successful close of the Revolutionary War. The seven years' 
struggle was over in the triumph of the colonies and the foun- 
dation of the Republic. The terms of peace had been rati- 
fied, and it was only necessary to arrange the preliminaries 
for the departure of the enemy from our shores. They were 
enemies no longer because amicable relations had been estab- 
lished between the mother country and the colonies by the 
recognition of the independence of the latter. The Amer- 
ican Army was in camp at Newburgh, under the command 
of General Washington, and the British Army at New York, 
under the command of Sir Henry Clinton. It was arranged 
that these two generals should meet at Dobbs Ferry, which 
was about midway between their two camps. To those who 
were born upon the banks of the Hudson, and whose ancestors 
were involved in the struggle, this meeting was of unusual inter- 
est. The place had long been known as about the center of what 



54 

was called the neutral ground. It was the little territory be- 
tween the outlying posts of either army which was constantly 
raided by irregulars of both. Within a short distance was 
Sleepy Hollow, where Andre had been captured by the three fa- 
mous farmers of Westchester, Paulding, Williams and Van 
Wort. This event, as much as any other, had contributed to the 
salvation of the patriot cause. The two generals undoubtedly 
approached the place by the Albany Post Road, which is still 
the main source of communication along the Hudson. Both 
armies had tramped over it in victory and defeat many times 
during the course of the struggle. Every foot of it was fa- 
miliar to the American staff and soldiers, as it was also to 
that of their armies. I doubt if any automobile could have 
gotten over it in that early day. For seven years it had been 
absolutely neglected, and, in its best state, was anything but 
an ideal highway. But to the bold riders who were to meet 
at Dobbs Ferry, the surface of the roadway was of little mo- 
ment. 

To-day this historical highway witnesses a procession far 
different from the American and British soldiers, the cowboys 
and the skinners who alternately and frequently marched over 
it during the seven years of revolution. The marchers of to- 
day believe they are tramping for a cause as vital as the one 
for which Washington fought. They are thirty-five militant 
suffragettes, with flags and banners and trumpets, on their way 
to Albany to capture the Governor and Legislature. It is a 
picturesque procession which would have interested and sur- 
prised General Washington and Sir Guy Carlton during their 
interview at Dobbs Ferry. „ 

At Dobbs Ferry they paused to view the historic spot 
where was arranged the Evacuation of New York by the 
British Army, its occupancy by the American Army and the 
successful close of the Revolution and the placing of the new 
Republic upon sure foundations built by their valor and ce- 
mented by their blood. Thirty of the militant ladies remained 
at Dobbs Ferry, while five bravely marched on. 

The ribald and unsympathetic press reported that the 
dropping out of the thirty-five was due to fatigue and ex- 
haustion. We know that is a libel upon these fair, coura- 



55 

geous women. They staid to study the history of Dobbs 
Ferry. 

An unsuccessful attack has been made for many years 
upon this historic name. An enterprising citizen of Colonial 
Westchester had established a ferry across the river from 
the Westchester side to Nyack on the Rockland side on the 
west. To inform the public of this means of communication, 
he had posted at the landing a sign, painted by himself, "Dobbs, 
His Ferry." The fact that the Commanders-in-Chief of the two 
armies met here for the purpose of arranging the details of 
the evacuation of New York, of its possession by the Con- 
tinental Army, of all that it signified for the present and 
the future of our country and to unborn generations ought 
to arouse and to intensify local pride in the preservation of 
such an historic spot. But for years the Post Office Depart- 
ment has been besieged to change the name to some high- 
sounding suburban title. Some want it called a Manor, after 
an old English estate, while others would give to it a romantic 
designation, gathered from the pages of some popular novel 
whose heroine had attracted their attention. However, the 
sturdy old families, whose ancestors have been there during 
the storm and stress of the perilous times of the Revolution, 
have been able so far to resist these wealthy newcomers, many 
of whom have no ancestors connected with the glorious days 
of Washington and the Continental Army. As a Westchester 
man, with a Westchester ancestry running back to the first 
settlement of the county and the purchase of land from the 
Indians, it was one of my most agreeable duties during the 
years I was United States Senator to prevent the obliteration 
of this historic name and its associations. If an event of 
such supreme importance, connected with the origin of any 
country in Europe had happened at any spot within its borders, 
it would be a place of pilgrimage for all succeeding genera- 
tions, and the neighbors instead of wishing to change it, that 
there might be upon their notepaper a more high-sounding 
designation, would have rejoiced that they lived in a neigh- 
borhood so classic, and look upon the spot, where the com- 
manders of the opposing armies met, with reverential awe. 

The neutral ground of which Dobbs Ferry was the cen- 



"56 

ter was raided repeatedly by the irregulars of both armies 
Two of my grandfathers, both of whom served in the American 
Army during the war, owned farms in this territory and were 
acute sufferers. As illustrating how long the passions of the 
Revolution survived, the day after I was admitted to the bar 
my father gave me a list of names with the admonition that 
I must never trust any of them ; that if witnesses they would 
be liars, and if litigants have unworthy cases, and if jurymen 
always to be challenged, because their fathers or grandfathers 
were Tories during the Revolution. 

This meeting between General Washington and Sir Henry 
Clinton had its counterpart many years afterward. They 
were both of .the same race and blood. The one was the com- 
mander of the forces of the government which had been 
supreme in the land from its firt settlement, and the other the 
commander of the forces in revolution against that govern- 
ment which had succeeded. Eighty-two years passed, during 
which the young Republic, recognized then at Dobbs Ferry, 
had grown to be one of the most powerful nations of the 
world, when there was another meeting between two generals, 
one representing the sovereign power of the nation and the 
other representing the people who were in revolution against 
its authority. In this case the place was not Dobbs Ferry, 
New York, but it was Appomattox, Virgina. In the first 
instance the revolution had been successful; in the second, 
the revolution had failed. The leaders in the first meeting 
were General Washington and Sir Henry Clinton; in the 
second, General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee. 
The issue of the first of these great meetings was the forma- 
tion of the new Republic and launching it upon its mission 
as an independent nation. The issue of the second meeting, 
eighty-two years afterward, was the reuniting of the par- 
tially broken Union and the reestablishment of the Republic 
upon a surer foundation and with a larger measure of free- 
dom, opportunity and hopefulness than ever before. 

The gathering, as always between great soldiers, must 
have been largely reminiscent, for Washington had been long 
an officer in the Colonial forces, serving under the British 
flag and associating with the British Army, and the incidents 



57 

of the campaign, so fresh to each of them, were memorable 
and undoubtedly furnished material for a conversation much 
longer than the preliminaries which were easily arranged. 
Sir Henry very properly thought that his army should remain 
until the meridian. It was a happy suggestion that until the 
sun has passed toward the setting, the old order of things 
should remain, and the army representing the old government 
should still be upon British soil, but when the sun started 
onward toward its setting, then should the march begin of 
that evacuation, which should signify and illustrate the setting 
of the sun of any foreign power within the limits of the new 
Republic. 

A little incident indicates that humor had taken the place 
of animosity between the two armies. The flagstaff at Fort 
George on the battery had been greased by the departing 
British soldiers to make it as difficult as possible for the Amer- 
ican to climb and raise the American standard. However, the 
enjoyment which they expected from this practical joke was 
spoiled by the ingenuity and agility of an American sailor. 
He succeeded in reaching the top of the flagstaff, and the last 
detachment of British soldiers which entered their boats to 
join their ships saw the American flag floating from the top 
of the greased pole, from which their own standard had been 
lowered an hour before. 

Seven years before the entry of the Continental Army 
into New York it had been driven from the island, and its 
retreat had been along the same highway upon which it re- 
turned in triumph seven years later. When one recalls the 
privations and hardships of the revolutionary soldiers during 
this long war, their sufferings from lack of food and clothing, 
as well as the perils which they had encountered, one can well 
imagine the elation, the enthusiasm and the elastic step with 
which they made their triumphal entry into our metropolitan 

city. 

It was on that day that our Society of the Cincinnati had 
its first banquet. The British fleet had passed the narrows 
and were out of sight when Governor Clinton gave a dinner 
to the American officers at Fraunce's Tavern. The Cincin- 
nati Society had been formed by General Washington in the 



58 

camp at Newburgh on the fourth of July, 1783, and on the 
twenty-fifth of November, 1783, the Governor of the State 
of New York, who was also a Brigadier General in the Con- 
tinental Army, gave this dinner to Washington and his officers. 
All of them were members of the newly formed Society of 
the Cincinnati. No such banquet has ever been held in our 
country. The war was over, and these veterans were to bid 
each other good-bye, never to be again reunited, and to re- 
turn to their homes. The Republic, for which they had fought 
seven years, was now a recognized sovereignty among the 
nations of the world, but the problems of organization and of 
government for the Thirteen Colonies cast a gloom upon the 
gathering. These veterans, who were both soldiers and states- 
men, knew that there were before them perils as great as those 
from which their valor had rescued the country. In the next 
five years of trial and experiment with government this ad- 
venture came near being wrecked. Failure attended the pre- 
liminary trials until finally the Constitution, as we have it 
to-day, was adopted by that extraordinary convention over 
which General Washington presided. Its adoption by the 
convention was largely due to the persuasion and the personal 
influence of General Washington. Its adoption by the States 
was largely due to the officers of the Continental Army, the 
comrades of Washington, who in every State became the rec- 
ognized advocates of this work of that wonderful body over 
which their beloved commander had presided. That Con- 
stitution has lived for one hundred and twenty-five years, 
practically unchanged. Gladstone's tribute to it, "The Amer- 
ican Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck 
off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," has 
been justified by the experiences of the years. All that we 
are as a nation is due to the wonderful foresight of those 
men who framed this great instrument and to the adaptability 
of their work to every change in conditions during this cen- 
tury and a quarter. 

After one hundred and twenty-five years of marvelous de- 
velopment, expansion, prosperity, liberty and happiness under 
the Constitution, we are now told it must be altered and its 
fundamental spirit of Representative Government destroyed. 



59 

To uphold this great charter of law and order with liberty, 
is one of the duties which devolve upon this Society of the 
Cincinnati, the sacred trust imposed upon its members by the 
fathers. 

But we go back to the banquet. Let us for a moment 
recreate the scene. It was the custom on such occasions for 
toasts and responsive speeches. We can easily imagine that 
the first sentiment was to the new Republic and a prayer for 
its perpetuity. The next, with more acclaim and more 
emotion than any compliment ever offered to a human be- 
ing, was to the commander-in-chief, General Washington. 
The response of the General, for he was no speaker, was not 
in words, but in an emotion which was shared by them all. 
Then came a grateful recognition of the services of our 
French allies and of a bright and witty response from General 
Lafayette. We can see the martial, rotund figure, with genial 
countenance, of General Knox rising to respond for the army. 
Auld Lang Syne has been the anthem which has closed many 
an historic gathering, but never was it sung with such fervor 
and feeling as on this occasion when the past was secure, 
when the present was so glorious, when heroes were clasping 
hands, and when the future was so full of doubt, and, at the 
same time, of hope. 

Nine days afterward came the most pathetic incident in 
the history of the Army of the United States. The officers 
had again assembled to bid a last farewell to General Wash- 
ington. It was once more in old Fraunce's Tavern. The war 
was over, the victory had been won, the Republic was founded, 
the army disbanded. These companions in arms who had 
suffered so much and fought so gloriously for seven years 
were to give up their commands and return to their homes. 
To many it was to privation and poverty, for everything had 
been sacrificed for their country. A hand clasp, a muffied 
good-bye and tears obscuring the sight was the farewell of 
these gallant men to their wonderful commander. They were 
all members of our Society. They were bidding good-bye to 
the Commander-in-chief of the army who was returning to 
private life, and also the President-General of the Society of 
the Cincinnati. They all felt that while they might meet in 



6o 

the future in their several States and the general Society once 
a year, there was no possibility that all should be gathered 
again, and, therefore, that this was the most significant meet- 
ing of the society formed for such a glorious purpose for the 
country, and in whose perpetuity they believed was the preser- 
vation of the principles upon which the government had beea 
founded. It was their hope and prayer that their descendents 
should strive through succeeding generations to preserve intact 
all that had been won by the valor of their ancestors. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
on the Occasion of the Presentation of the 
Grand Jewel of the 33°, at the Masonic Hall, 
New York, December 20, 1912. 

Brethren : Many things occur to one during life which 
are memorable in their influence upon character and career; 
others which give distinct pleasure so great as to separate that 
day from others and make it a red-letter one. This is espe- 
cially the case with gifts. No boy ever forgets his first watch. 
No girl ever forgets her first bracelet or ring. Little note 
is taken of these incidents at the time, but they become more 
precious with advancing years, and as the days of the gift 
recede the memory of them grows brighter. 

Middle age also has its gifts from the larger circle which 
has then been formed and the closer intimacies which have 
been made. It is after one has passed seventy that evidences 
of friendship are more cherished. It is one of the lamentable 
incidents of a career that those whom we love and cherish drop 
away and join the majority while we go marching on. The 
circle narrows, and, except for certain redeeming features, the 
period beyond threescore and ten would grow more and more 
lonely until one stood absolutely alone. This must be the 
case with those who have not cherished, during their oppor- 
tunities, love and brotherhood. It is possible to ward off this 
isolation by keeping abreast with the times and active in all 
living discussions and interests. It is possible to form asso- 
ciations with those who have come later upon the stage, but they 
are never the warm friendships, the intimacies and the con- 
fidences of youth and of middle age. 

There is one absolute panacea, however, for these ills, and 
that is found within the bosom of Masonry. Masonry is ever 
young, and its associations ever fresh. Within its walls the 
sentiment which is the inspiration of the Craft is the perpetual 
youth of friendship, of companionship and of brotherhood by 
means of the sacred tie. 

We are now within a few days of Christmas It is a 



02 

period of festivities which are peculiarly affiliated with our 
Order. We celebrate at Christmas time the coming upon 
earth in the person of Divinity appearing as a man, the uni- 
versality of love and peace and good will among men. It was 
a doctrine which had never been known and never practiced 
before. It has been working its way for nearly two thousand 
years, until now it is recognized universally as the mainspring 
of action for happiness both with individuals and with na- 
tions. The fact that there is a war raging in Europe does not 
militate against the growth of this idea. In the olden time the 
world was always at war — at war for territory, for revenge, 
for racial hatred, or for the ambitions of reigning dynasties 
in monarchical countries. There were certain great questions 
which could be solved only by war. With us, it was the ques- 
tion of slavery, but that eliminated we will have peace 
among ourselves forever. This war in the Balkans is a 
war of religions which has been slumbering for six hundred 
years. The Balkan peasant wears mourning upon his hat for 
defeat in a battle with the Turks six centuries ago. 'The op- 
pression by the Mohammedans of the Christian natives dur- 
ing all these ages has finally culminated in the present struggle. 
The victory of the Balkan Christian over the Mohammedan 
Turk is due to the advancement of the ages, as well as to 
modern ideas penetrating their mountains, reaching them in 
their schools, being carried back to them by their immigrants 
who have come to America, made a competency and then re- 
turned home, while nothing in all this time has been able to 
penetrate the fatalism of the Koran. The spirit which started 
two thousand years ago, working out for these Balkan peoples 
brotherhood with each other and a common faith which united 
them, notwithstanding territorial divisions, has enabled them to 
beat the Turk, who has advanced little according to modern 
ideas from his ancestor who swept over Europe in that dis- 
tant age. 

But Masonry has grown stronger with the centuries. It 
appeals to the best element of human nature, to the only liv- 
ing thing there is in humanity, and that is the brotherhood of 
man and the fatherhood of God. 

There are distinctions in this world, not so great as there 



63 

used to be, but they still exist and always will. In a Republic 
like ours all men are equal one day in the year, when, as citi- 
zens, they deposit their ballots, but every other day in the 
year they differ in fortune, in station and in almost every way. 
But those who enter the sacred portals of Masonry leave 
behind their titles and their distinctions and come in all as 
men and brothers. This is not for one day nor for one year, 
but for all time. When a Mason has advanced so that he 
reaches the exalted position of the highest honors in the Scot- 
tish Rite, he carries with him not only this brotherhood and all 
that it means in helpfulness, but he realizes as he never did 
before that there are gradations in truth. Not but what all 
truth is the same, but in the purer and more elevated and 
more clarified atmosphere of the Scottish Rite degrees all 
sides of truth and all the beneficent power of truth and all the 
energizing and recreating power of truth are clearer than they 
ever were before. 

A new society has been formed and assumed a title 
which has added a new word to the English language. They 
call themselves "Spugs." Within a month they claim that twenty- 
two hundred have enrolled under their banner, and each one, 
both men and women, proudly says, "I am a Spug." The 
idea of the society is to stop the useless giving at Christmas 
which desecrates both the day and the gift. A gift is worse 
than useless; it is an injury unless accompanied by the proper 
sentiment from the giver and a reciprocal sentiment from the 
recipient. I know of nothing more demoralizing than the pain- 
ful consultations of Brown and Smith and Jones with their 
wives as to what they shall do for Robinson, and of Robin- 
son with his wife of how he shall reciprocate what he is afraid 
he will get from Brown and Smith and Jones. I know of 
a lady who from a person she cared nothing about, except 
socially, received a fan, and the next year she sent it to another 
whom she cared nothing about, except socially, and another 
year that person sent it back to the original giver, and then all 
three became enemies. Christmas in a family, and especially 
for the children with Santa Claus still a reality, is the most 
delightful festival of the year. 

But you are presenting me with a gift to-night which has 



6 4 

a significance not to be found in any Christmas offering. It is 
more than the watch or the ring or the necklace because it 
has no duplicates. Money cannot purchase it ; rank cannot 
secure it; power cannot win it. It is the original creation of 
the inspired artist who threw into it an expression which none 
but those entitled to wear it can understand or the sweetness 
and the charm and the love which it signifies. Its appearance 
carries the wearer everywhere among brethren whom he never 
knew before, and who seeing the emblem are his brothers at 
once. To me, appreciating as I do, all that the emblem stands 
for, and all that it means, there comes an added significance 
and power which warms my heart and touches me very deeply. 
It is that those who have chosen me to be a brother among 
them have not only conferred upon me that great honor, but 
that they have also assumed and claimed the privilege of secur- 
ing this jewel and of giving it to me not only for what it means, 
but for what they think of me and what they know of the re- 
gard I have for them. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the dinner given by the Lotos Club of New 
York to Governor William Sulzer, February 8, 
1913. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : It has been the custom 
of the Lotos Club to greet with all its honors the incoming 
Governor of the State of New York. This ceremony began 
almost with its organization, and has, therefore, included most 
of our chief executives during the last half century. As my 
membership dates back farther and has lasted longer, I think, 
than any other, it has been my pleasure to participate in all 
these ceremonials. 

It is gratifying to our State pride and the good judgment 
of our citizenship that we never have had an unworthy Gov- 
ernor. However much they have differed in their politics, 
their policies and their characteristics, all of them have been 
fit Governors of the Empire State. It was my privilege to 
become acquainted with Governor Sulzer when he took his first 
step, nearly a quarter of a century ago, as a member of the 
legislature, and to follow his most interesting career with 
admiration and friendship. 

The Governorship of the State of New York is in many 
ways second only in responsibilities to the Presidency of the 
United States. Our friend is already discovering the wonder- 
ful difference between being a member of the legislative branch 
and the executive. As a legislator or congressman he is one 
of many. As President or Governor, he is it. The Governor 
sends his messages to the two hundred members of the legis- 
lature and expects them to adopt his suggestions. If they 
originate measures and pass them, which are contrary to his 
judgment, he does not hesitate to set his opinion up against 
that of the majority of the legislative branch and to interpose 
his veto. If he is the party leader, as the Governor ought to 
be, and if his party friends are in the majority, the veto is 
never overridden. It is to the credit of Governor Sulzer's 
courage that he has laid out "a broad, liberal and statesman- 



66 

like program for his administration, and that he has informed 
the legislature that he is the leader, as he ought to be by virtue 
of his office. 

When we criticize so freely, as we do our Governor, we 
ought to remember what we require of him. I was elected 
Secretary of State of New York, fifty years ago this year. 
Horatio Seymour was Governor. It was in the midst of the 
Civil War. Notwithstanding the usual expenses of great 
amount imposed upon the State because of its contribution to 
the Army, the budget was only about seven millions of dollars, 
but in those days that sum was raised by direct taxation. This 
made the people very watchful of their State finances and they 
held their representatives to a strict account for every pro- 
jected improvement and the expenditure of every dollar. A 
hundred thousand dollars, more or less, in that early date in 
the State budget would lead to a political revolution. With 
the disappearance of the direct tax and the raising of all 
revenues by indirect taxation, this supervision by the great mass 
of the people disappeared. This sense of accountability and 
responsibility went with it, and almost imperceptibly our budget 
has grown from seven millions to forty millions without dis- 
cussion and without protest. 

I am glad the Governor, as his first act, has appointed a 
committee to look into all the departments and to find out 
how efficiency can lead to economy. When Senator Aldrich 
remarked in the Senate some years ago that as a business 
man and on business principles he could save three hundred 
millions of dollars a year running the government, his state- 
ment was declared to be absolutely absurd, and yet President 
Taft's efficiency and economy committee have found where 
there could be a saving of nearly one hundred millions a year 
without impairing in the least the work of the various depart- 
ments. The trouble with economy is its cruelty. One of the 
necessities of our form of government, in so far as there is 
no civil service, is the constantly increasing and unnecessary 
employment to take care of political parties and their leaders. 
We rightly criticize the enormous extravagance of the govern- 
ment of the City of New York. We know that one-third of 
our appropriations are wasted, and yet that condition is charge- 



67 

able largely to our system. It is the same with all parties and 
under all administrations. Berlin does better with a dollar 
than New York does with five, because in Berlin the trained 
man only takes his place, whether humble or lofty, and five men 
are not appointed where one whose efficiency and competency 
could more satisfactorily do the work. 

The Governor of the State of New York at the present 
time is the executive officer of our system of canals, of the 
expenditure of one hundred and one million of dollars upon 
them, of the selection, location, plan and development of the 
terminals and of one hundred millions of dollars for the 
highways of the State. He ought to possess all the qualities 
which would recommend him to a board of directors of one 
of the great railway systems of the country. The same prob- 
lems and responsibilities are before him and he does not have 
the guidance of a board of directors who are financially in- 
terested and by trained men who have been brought up from 
the bottom for the discharge of their various duties. So that 
if Governor Sulzer successfully manages the Barge Canal, 
which will be opened in his term, with its terminals, and the 
expenditure of this vast sum upon the roads, with happy and 
satisfactory results, when he retires from office or the political 
situation should change and he be relegated to private life, he 
would have a high claim and a good chance to become one of 
those few most efficient, most patriotic and most useful citizens 
of the United States, and most unpopular politically, a railroad 
president. 

Then one of the greatest responsibilities resting upon our 
Governor is the supervisory care of the metropolis of the 
Western Continent. No matter how much of a home ruler 
he may be. the problems of the great city are constantly com- 
ing to him for solution. The electorate of the city numbers 
one-half of the voters of the State. Its party leader or boss 
is in command of a solid phalanx as against the warring fac- 
tions of the rural districts. I think the hardest task of a 
Democratic Governor, and one which shows the highest quali- 
ties of diplomacy, tact and statesmanship, is to placate that 
leader and still please the people. 

Silas Wright, the selected prototype of our friend, and his 



.68 



great admiration, was Governor when I was ten years old, so I 
did not know him. But I was in the convention which nomi- 
nated Governor Morgan in 1858 and in the legislature during 
his second term. I thus came to know him intimately, and have 
been on friendly terms with every Governor since. We did 
not have in those days the great multi-millionaires whose names 
and fortunes are now the most exciting subject of public com- 
ment, but in the development of that early time we had a few of 
the same masterful and successful men. They were called 
Merchant Princes. They were Edwin D. Morgan, the Grin- 
nells, Howland and Aspinwall, while in transportation stood the 
giant figure of Commodore Vanderbilt. When Mr. Morgan 
consented to run it was hailed generally as a most patriotic 
thing that a man of such vast business should be willing to leave 
it and give to the people the benefit of his wonderful and dem- 
onstrated talent in affairs. The most popular men in the com- 
munity were these Merchant Princes, because it was generally 
understood that they were developing with a rapidity and suc- 
cess, which no other people could, the resources of the country, 
adding to its enterprise and its employment and especially in- 
creasing its internal trade and foreign commerce. As one of 
the changes which have taken place in public sentiment since 
that time, no such man could now be elected Governor of the 
State of New York. If he did get the office he would not be 
complimented because of surrendering his private affairs to 
give his great experience and talent to the public service, but 
it would be said he had taken the office for the purpose of 
promoting the special interests. Now, such a man, instead of 
receiving legislative or executive honors, is more likely to be 
the recipient of the inquiries and attention of the Grand Jury 
or a Congressional Investigating Committee anxious to dis- 
cover how much he has, where he got it and how. 

I agree with Governor Sulzer that the careers of these old 
worthies are valuable subjects for study. After being as- 
sociated with them, as I have, for nearly sixty years, however, 
as Presidents, Governors and Legislators, I differ with our 
friend in his view that they are models to be followed. I think 
rather their value to statesmen of the present day is to avoid 
their mistakes. 



.6 9 

Silas Wright, the Governor's exemplar, was a great man, 
Horatio Seymour paid him this remarkable tribute: 

"Mr. Wright was a great man, an honest man. If he 
committed errors they were induced by his devotion to his 
party. He was not selfish. To him his party was everything ; 
himself nothing." 

In our day when insurgency is so popular, this is not an 
epitaph which a progressive would want put upon his tomb- 
stone. And just here comes a suggestion of mistakes for our 
friend to avoid. Silas Wright might have been nominated for 
Vice-President in 1844, and would afterward have been Presi- 
dent, but he was persuaded that he and no one else could carry 
the State of New York, and therefore he should give up the 
Presidency to run for Governor and save the party. He never 
got another chance. 

When I was a member of the Legislature and Morgan 
was Governor, the House of the Assembly was a tie. As the 
law was in those days, each House had to nominate for United 
States Senator before the two Houses could go into joint ses- 
sion. The Senate was overwhelmingly Republican, so that in 
joint ballot a Republican Senator would be elected. I was 
the nominee of our party for Speaker, which was a great and 
greatly desired honor for a young man under thirty. A Demo- 
cratic member offered to so vote that we could go into joint 
caucus if I would give up the Speakership and induce our 
party to elect him. Ten Democratic members offered to vote 
for me if I would stand. Friends of Governor Morgan, who 
wanted to be Senator, said, "Young man, if you make this 
sacrifice you will win the gratitude of the party and all its 
honors will be yours during all the coming years." I sur- 
rendered the Speakership to elect Morgan United States Sena- 
tor. That night the reception given to me surpassed in cheers, 
flattery and champagne anything ever known at the Capitol. 
The next day nobody remembered what I had done, so, Gov- 
ernor, if you are elected for a second term the prestige of 
the great State of New York behind you makes you a won- 
derfully attractive candidate for the Presidential nomination 
in 1916. If, when the prize is within your grasp, the leaders 
gather around you and say that immortality is yours if you 



7o 

pass it on to some one else, remember that the bird once loosed 
from your hand never returns, but mocks you from the bush. 

It is reported that another of our Governors, whom you 
greatly admire, and who is in a way an example, was my 
old friend Tilden. My relations with him were most intimate 
and confidential. He discussed with me all those policies which 
made him a national figure before he promulgated them. Al- 
though I was on the platform for our own party, he revealed 
to me views about his own followers and his own purposes 
which would have ruined his political prospects if they had been 
told. I highly appreciated this confidence. He was the most 
patient of listeners, the most plodding of workers and the 
most procrastinating of statesmen. He would listen to an ap- 
plicant for office or the signature of a bill with absorption, 
which indicated to the petitioner the certainty of success, and 
then one eye would drop on his cheek; his expression would 
be that so well known in the Egyptian Sphinx, and, in a sepul- 
chral voice, he would say, "I will see you later." That later 
time never came. At the Governor's funeral there were more 
floral tributes than had ever been paid to a public man. Among 
them, from an unknown source, was a pillow in white flowers 
and upon it in large letters "S. Y. L." — "See you later." It 
indicated what this disappointed gentleman would do to the 
Governor if in the luck of accidents he happened to land in 
the same place in the next world where the Governor was. 

Fenton and Hill were the greatest politicians we ever had 
in the Gubernatorial chair. Fenton created a party machine 
which lasted for ten years, and was only broken by General 
Grant as President giving the vast patronage which existed at 
that time into the hands of Senator Conkling. Governor Hill 
united the country behind him as against the city and was 
continued until he was wearied in the leadership of the State. 

I remember as if it was yesterday Mr. Sulzer being pointed 
out to me as he was climbing the State Street Hill on the way 
to the Capitol when first elected a member of the Legislature 
twenty-five years ago. I saw at once that he felt that no one 
had ever received this honor before, or if they had it had not 
the same significance. I think the Governor will admit that 
was the proudest moment of his life. I know that is true of all 



•71 

public men that the first honor gives them satisfaction which 
no subsequent ones afford, however great. 

We all can honor the Governor because he refutes in his 
own person in such an emphatic and distinguished way the 
pessimism of the hour. From press and platform we hear 
constantly reiterated that because of our modern conditions 
there is no longer opportunity for the young men in civic life 
or in business. This idea has taken a singular hold upon the 
public mind, notwithstanding that there is' no community so 
small that it does not have examples of men and of women 
who have overcome all obstacles and made careers. Our guest 
is a fine example of what is known as a self-made man. With- 
out fortune, without powerful relatives, friends or associations, 
he has made his own way. He educated himself by his own 
exertions. He earned the money to keep him going while he 
studied law until he was admitted. Now, at his zenith, and 
still under fifty, he has been many times a member of our 
Legislature, Speaker of our House of Assembly, nearly twenty 
years in Congress, gaining there a national reputation, and, to- 
night, Governor of the Empire State. 

He has been Governor a little over a month. In that 
period problems have been presented to him more acute than 
have met any Governor during the first four weeks of his term. 
He has been jammed in the subway, but I think he is safely 
out. Our friend, Mr. Murphy, pointed out to him his little 
graveyard in which are buried so many who have met with 
an untimely political death. A powerful and influential news- 
paper pointed out its graveyard and said to him, "We not 
only bury here those who disagree with us, but we inflict 
punishment after death." In inducing a distinguished, able 
and honored member of our Supreme Court to help solve this 
problem, the Governor seems to have justified the tact and 
ability which have carried him so far in his remarkable career. 
We have never known a time when the people wanted rapid 
transit as much as they do now or with such unanimity. The 
present battle, so far as I can understand, is who shall have 
the credit. People care nothing for technical distinctions if 
they delay something which they want. They do not stop 
to consider disputes about the pecuniary side of transactions 



72 

which involve their comfort and their health. They want 
what they want, and the want it now. The tired girl who 
has been in the shop all day wants a seat on her way home. 
The man of family, unable to get out of the tenement, wants 
the rapid transit that will carry him to purer air and better 
surroundings for his children. The whole mass of working 
men and women feel that additional subways and cheaper and 
more rapid and more comfortable methods of getting in and 
out to their places of labor means health, longevity and hap- 
piness for them and theirs, so this town wants this question 
settled immediately, and I believe that is the wish and purpose 
of our guest. 

Governor, though we differ in politics, when political hon- 
ors are due from a member of your party, I have always re- 
joiced that they came to you. I congratulate you upon your 
present high position, and you have my best wishes for your 
future. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

as Chairman at the Pilgrims Society Luncheon 
to the Delegates from England, Belgium, Can- 
ada and Australia to Arrange for Celebrating 
1914, or 100 Years of Peace Between the United 
States and Great Britain, at the Waldorf-Astoria, 
May 5, 1913. 

Gentlemen: It is a very pleasing duty which I have to 
perform here to-day. The Pilgrims Society was organized by 
the English and Americans in London, and the Americans 
and English in New York, for the purpose of promoting and 
perpetuating good relations and peace between the English- 
speaking peoples of the world. (Applause.) 

We have, in the course of the decade during which we 
have existed, welcomed representative men of both countries, 
both in the capital of Great Britain and in New York City; 
but there never has been so significant an occasion connected 
with the purpose of this Society as that which calls us to- 
gether to-day. (Applause.) 

We are here to welcome and to greet with all the hon- 
ors representatives of Great Britain who have crossed the 
ocean on the glorious mission of preparing, with their 
brethren of Canada and the other English possessions round 
the world, with the people of the United States, appropriate 
ceremonies for the celebration next year of one hundred years 
of peace between the English-speaking nations. (Great ap- 
plause.) 

It is somewhat dramatic that we meet here at this par- 
ticular time, when the world was never so near a great conflict, 
and when the world was never so armed and in preparation 
for it. While continental nations are burdening themselves 
beyond all precedent in order to be ready for war, which the 
Prime Minister of Great Britain stated the other day we had 
just escaped, and which the press says we are on the eve of 
now, we, representing Great Britain and the United States meet 



•74 

in the midst of war alarms for peace and peace alone. (Hearty 
applause; cries of "Hear, hear!") 

Now we have with us to-day also the representatives of 
the city in which this commission met. It is singular that the 
histories, whether they are written by English or American 
historians, give only a scant line to the meeting of these 
commissioners a century ago in this city of Ghent. When 
ages from now Macaulay's New Zealander, who was to stand 
on the broken arches of London Bridge and view the ruins 
of St. Paul, arrives home he will write a history of the world, 
and I venture to say that he will give more pages to the meet- 
ing of those Peace Commissioners at Ghent a century ago 
and its results than any other one in the million years which 
he discusses. 

Why, my friends, that was a marvelous commission, and 
the names of two of those commissioners are still household 
words with us — John Quincy Adams, afterwards President of 
the United States, and Henry Clay, the most eloquent states- 
man and the most popular leader of his time. It is recorded in 
a few letters which are in existence that when they arrived in 
Ghent the Society of Arts and Sciences elected them mem- 
bers. Now, those statesmen knew mighty little about arts 
and sciences; old masters were not in fashion then and you 
could not have sold one or given one away in the United 
States under any condition. (Laughter.) But having elected 
them as members of the Arts and Sciences, the Society im- 
mediately gave them a dinner; and the city of Ghent, un- 
true to that impartiality which should belong to a referee, 
offered, through its Burgomaster, as the toast, "Success to 
the Americans in this Negotiation." (Laughter.) After the 
ceremonies and the discussions were completed and the treaty 
fully agreed to and signed by all the commissioners, then 
the American commissioners gave a dinner to the British com- 
mission. Now, there was this fortunate thing for the states- 
men of that period. The British statesmen could not have 
praised Americans and been elected to, anything, and the 
American statesmen, in the tone of public sentiment at that 
time, could never have praised Great Britain, with any hope 
of the future. But there were no cables and no reporters 



•75 

(laughter), and the result is that this chronicler, only in a 
letter, says that never were such compliments paid by the 
British to America or by the Americans to the British. 
(Laughter.) John Quincy Adams broke loose from the icy 
surroundings of his New England culture and Puritan blood 
and grew warm on the subject, and Henry Clay was never 
so mellifluous, never so eloquent, never so grand in his eu- 
logiums of the country from which we all sprang. But they 
were not reported. 

There is a significance about that dinner ; it was the first 
one which was ever held, in an international way, between 
Englishmen and Americans for the purpose of celebrating 
good will between the two peoples. Every dinner since then, 
and there has been a million of them, has been for that one 
purpose, and every speech that has been made since has been 
an echo of those speeches which were made a hundred years 
ago. (Applause.) 

According to our judgment, the present causes of threat- 
ened war, which is to join in its conflagration all Europe 
and, possibly, all Asia, seem to be mighty small to us Ameri- 
cans, and I have no doubt mighty small to Englishmen, if I 
may use an optical illusion, with eyes which go around the 
globe. 

But, my friends, while we have been at peace for one 
hundred years, we have not always been on the most amicable, 
friendly and loving terms ; and we would have been a mighty 
poor lot and unworthy of our ancestry if we had been. (Ap- 
plause.) There must, among virile people, arise many ques- 
tions of difference, and those questions will come to the break- 
ing point. Now, we haven't fought, though we have had plenty 
of causes to fight about during those hundred years, not be- 
cause either of us was afraid nor because either of us didn't 
sometimes long for a fight. We have both of us fought for a 
sentiment ; we have both of us fought on the drop of the hat ; 
we have both of us fought because one of our citizens was in- 
sulted somewhere; we have both of us fought where we had 
no earthly interest, except to protect or to save or to rescue 
a people who were unduly oppressed. (Great applause.) 
Now, we came near fighting over the Northeastern Boundary, 



7 6 

but just as it came to the breaking point, the greatest intellect 
that we have ever had since Hamilton in American diplomacy 
or statesmanship, Webster, suggested the solution that Lord 
Ashburton approved. We came near fighting when both sides 
claimed the whole Pacific coast. The English suggested the 
49th parallel, and the Americans said "No" ; then the Ameri- 
cans suggested the 49th parallel to the English, and the Eng- 
lish said "No"; others suggested several other parallels, and 
both sides said "No." Then Polk was elected on "54-40 or 
fight." And after Polk was elected he studied geography a 
little, and then he said to the representatives of Great Britain : 
"I was elected on 54-40 or fight, but how does 49 appear to 
you?" "Well," said the English Prime Minister, " it never 
occurred to me before, but it is just the thing." (Laughter.) 
Then in later times, when differences came to the breaking 
point, they were settled by the genius of John Hay and the 
brilliant diplomacy of Lord Pauncefote. (Applause.) In 
our own recent recollection every obstacle in the way has been 
removed by the diplomacy of our own Senator, Elihu Root, and 
Ambassador James Bryce. (Applause.) 

I heard of a family which had two possessions it highly 
valued : one was a pet goat and the other a Persian rug 
a thousand years old, very fine and of brilliant color. The 
goat ate up the rug, and as a proper punishment he was car- 
ried by the family down to the track and tied on his back to 
one of the rails. Then the executioners awaited his proper 
punishment, but as the express train rounded the curve, the 
goat took in the situation, coughed up the rug, flagged the 
train and saved his life and the family heirloom. (Laughter.) 
Now, it has so happened that in every crisis during these one 
hundred years there were statesmen on both sides who could 
get into an agreement and flag the train of war before the 
collision occurred. 

Now, if I may make — and sometimes we can do it yet — ■ 
just the slightest kind of a classical allusion, it is said in his- 
tory the gates of the Temple of Janus were closed only four 
times in two thousand years, and then only for a few months 
at a time. Our gates of the Temple of Janus, which holds 
the household Gods of English-speaking peoples, have been 



77 

closed over a century. The gates are rusted and the metal 
has fused. There never can be an open gate again through 
which the armies can march, or the machines of war can 
go to the ports for dreadnoughts of the navy. From now 
and forever more and especially when we have cemented 
peace by the celebration which is to come next year, peace 
will remain between the English-speaking peoples of the 
world, not only for their own advancement, but as an example 
for the civilization and humanity of the whole world. (Tre- 
mendous applause.) 



Report of Speech Delivered on Board the Steamship 
" Kronprinzessin Cecilie" on Voyage from New 
York to Cherbourg, June 14, 1913, in Honor of 
the German Emperor's Jubilee. 

Mr. Chauncey M. Depew Makes Striking Tribute to the 

German Emperor 

To the Editor of the Herald: 

I was present at the concert given on the steamship 
Kronprinzessin Cecilie on June 14th, when Mr. Chauncey M. 
Depew, who acted as chairman, made an eloquent reference 
to the German Emperor's Jubilee, and I feel sure that the fol- 
lowing report of Mr. Depew's speech may be of interest to 

you. 

After highly complimenting Captain Polack and the man- 
agement of the steamship, Mr. Depew said : "It seems most 
appropriate that on a German ship and under the German 
flag, on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the acces- 
sion of the German Emperor to the throne, a tribute should be 
paid to this distinguished Sovereign. 

"I was at Salzburg, in the Tyrol, a few years after the 
Franco-German War. Our little company was profoundly 
stirred by the arrival of the German Emperor, accompanied 
by his grandson, the present Kaiser. Though ill and of great 
age, the Emperor marched into the hotel and up the broad 
staircase unassisted and with the step of a veteran soldier. 
The Emperor rapidly recovered, and I had an opportunity to 
be near him and his grandson, the latter a superb-looking 
young man with an impressive personality. With two lives 
between him and succession, there seemed likely to be a long 
interval before he would reach the throne. 

'dropping the pilot' 

"A few years afterwards I was in London when the 
young Emperor had dispensed with the services of Bismarck. 
Punch had a cartoon called 'Dropping the Pilot.' The youth- 



So 

ful sovereign, pictured as a presumptuous boy, was looking 
over the lofty bulwarks of the battleship down to the rowboat 
carrying away his Chancellor. It was youthful audacity and 
self-confidence dismissing his most eminent and famous ad- 
viser at the critical moment in his career and taking the reins 
of Government into his own hands to inaugurate and carry on 
his own policies. 

"The picture so well portrayed the opinions held in all the 
Chancelleries of Europe that one of the ablest and most dis- 
tinguished statesmen of England purchased from Punch the 
original sketch, which was the best of the famous cartoons of 
Sir John Tenniel. It represented what European statesmen 
generally believed to be the future — trouble for Germany in her 
internal affairs and danger to the peace of Europe. 

"The Emperor, during his reign, has gloriously refuted 
all these predictions. He has given to the German people the 
most beneficent quarter of a century in their history. He has 
fostered domestic industries by a protective tariff, which has 
given Germany its own market. He encouraged by every favor 
of Government the building of a merchant marine which car- 
ries the products of the Fatherland to every part of the world. 
He made an inland Empire not only the most formidable 
military power, but so enlarged its navy that it can protect 
its vast commerce and compete for supremacy on the seas. 

STOPS EMIGRATION 

"He stopped the vast emigration which was carrying the 
flower of German manhood and womanhood to enrich other 
lands, by providing remunerative industries at home and mak- 
ing his country one of the most highly organized, skilful and 
profitable national workshops ever known. The policies which 
have made a miracle in Germany in the last quarter of a cen- 
tury our people at home have decided to renounce. They are 
entering upon the experiment gaily and hilariously ; we all 
hope their expectations will be realized. 

"The Emperor's diplomacy has gained everything his coun- 
try demanded, and the magnitude and perfection of his military 
and naval power have protected German interests from assault 



.8 1 



and kept neighboring states from entering upon the hazards 
of a conflict, which might be decided to their ruin or injury 
by the mailed hand of Germany. 

"Speaking for the Americans who are passengers on this 
German ship, and, I believe, voicing the views of the American 
people, I extend to the Emperor our cordial congratulations 
and best wishes for the future. 

"An American Passenger." 



ADDRESS BY HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Forma- 
tion of the Village of Ossining, State of New 
York, October 13, 1913. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : Twenty-seven years ago I was 
in Heidelberg. The five hundredth anniversary of the found- 
ing of its famous university had just been celebrated with 
impressive ceremonies. The Emperor, the Grand Duke, the 
high officials of the Empire and distinguished professors and 
men of letters graced the occasion. For the visitor all that 
was left were the decorations in canvas and tinsel where in 
the ruins of the old castle had been recreated Germany of five 
centuries before. It was mainly the pomp, display and 
majesty of war. It was knights in armor and feudal banners 
which had been carried victoriously on many a battlefield. 
The lesson of the hour, as conveyed by these remnants of the 
banquet, was not of peace or of learning, but of the might 
of embattled royalty and nobility maintaining with their re- 
tainers the prestige of their government, their class and their 
institutions. 

The centenary which we celebrate today in this simple 
way has an entirely different and more significant meaning. 
The pomp and circumstance and glories of war, the pageantry 
of feudalism and its class distinctions have no place here. The 
century which closes tonight has no equal in recorded history 
of the benefits which it has bestowed upon humanity. Every 
class and condition in life have been equally the beneficiaries 
of its marvelous achievements. More has been accomplished 
in charity, bestowed without favor, in all-embracing philan- 
thropy, in invention and discovery, in conquests of the forces 
of nature and disciplining them to the service of man, and, 
in orderly liberty, than in all the cycles which have preceded. 

When the University of Heidelberg was founded, the 
learned and the unlearned still regarded with awe the seven 
wonders of the world, which were repeated everywhere in 
the following lines: 



8 4 

The pyramids first, which in Egypt were laid ; 
Next Babylon's garden for Amytis made; 
Then Mausolos's tomb of affection and guilt ; 
Fourth, the temple of Dian, in Ephesus built ; 
The colossus of Rhodes, cast in brass, to the sun ; 
Sixth, Jupiter's statue, by Phidias done; 
The pharos of Egypt comes last, we are told, 
Or the palace of Cyrus, cemented with gold. 

But the wonders of this century are steam and its infinite 
application, unifying the world by railroads and steamships; 
electricity, belting the earth in instantaneous communication 
by the telegraph and cable and the wireless ; the Suez Canal 
which united Western Europe with Asia, and the Panama 
Canal which will bind the North and South American Hemi- 
spheres in mutual interdependence and immensely productive, 
political and commercial relations and make the Pacific Ocean 
the highway of nations ; the inventions and discoveries which 
have multiplied power so that production can take care of 
increasing populations better than ever before, and the ad- 
vances in medicine and surgery which have found out the 
sources and removed the terrors of plagues, diseases and frac- 
tures which for ages have devastated and tortured mankind. 
Education has been popularized and brought within reach of 
all at the expense of the State with increasing liberty and 
opportunity. But the greatest wonder of all is the United 
States of America which has passed its one hundred and 
twenty-fifth year unchanged in its Constitution and institutions, 
a light for the guidance of other peoples and a home for mil- 
lions who have been absorbed in its citizenship and assimilated 
to its ideas of liberty and civilization. 

The story of the organization of this municipal corpora- 
tion would be incomplete without a picture of the background 
which educated and prepared the people of this town one hun- 
dred years ago for the formation of a representative govern- 
ment. The name of the town and of the village both came 
from Indian sources. While a large number of the municipal- 
ities of our State are named after the cities of Greece and 
Rome, or the Gods of Ancient Mythology, this village and 



85 

township happily preserved the musical and appropriate nomen- 
clature of its first inhabitants. The Six Nations of aboriginal 
Indians whose capital was in the Mohawk Valley, had the 
genius to discover, without outside aid or knowledge, the 
power of federated government. These tribes extended their 
power and exacted tribute from the extreme north down to 
the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic 
Circle. The most powerful among these six tribes were the 
Mohigans whose habitat was along the Hudson. One family 
of them lived upon this spot, with their larger settlement 
Ossining and their smaller one Sing Sing. From these hills 
they saw the Half Moon anchor in Tappan Zee in 1609, and 
undoubtedly examined this strange craft with their canoes. 
They little dreamed that it was the forerunner of a stronger 
race which was to occupy their lands and before which they 
were to disappear. 

Seventy-one years later Frederick Philipse, a successful 
New York merchant, was granted a patent by the British Crown 
permitting him to "freely buy" the district of country extend- 
ing from Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Croton River, where 
this great manor joined the manorial estate of the Van Cort- 
landts. When the Revolutionary War broke out the descend- 
ant of this Philipse cast his lot with the British while Van 
Cortlandt remained faithful to the patriot cause. At the close 
of the war the Philipse family fled to England. The estate 
was confiscated and purchased mainly by the tenants. Philipse 
purchased the property from the Indians for a miscellaneous 
and not very large collection of knives, guns, powder, lead, 
cloth, axes, wampum, and probably most attractive, two ankers 
of rum, an anker containing twelve gallons. The Indian had 
thus early acquired a taste for fire-water, which, more than 
the guns of the enemy, led to his extermination. And yet, at 
the sale of the confiscated estate in 1784, what now constitutes 
nearly the whole of northern Westchester, except the northern 
part of Cortlandt town, brought only forty-three thousand 
dollars. 

This town was in the midst of what is famous in the 
story of the Revolutionary struggle as the neutral ground. 
The British Army was encamped in New York; the American 



86 

Army at Peekskill and the hills north, and this intermediate ter- 
ritory was raided by the scouting and foraging parties of both 
armies, but, worst of all, was subject to plundering bands of 
banditti, known as cowboys or skinners who masqueraded, 
sometimes as loyalists and sometimes as revolutionists, but 
were always thieves. 

Within few miles of here Andre was captured by Pauld- 
ing, Williams and Van Wart. Had he succeeded in reaching 
New York with the papers in his possession, West Point would 
have fallen, the country would have been divided by the Hud- 
son River and independence postponed for an indefinite period. 

A most interesting book could be written on the trifling 
incidents which have led to mighty results. Two farmer's 
boys, one a white man and the other a negro, Sherwood and 
Peterson, were making cider on the Frost Estate about four 
miles north from this spot. They saw a boat put off from 
the Vulture which had brought Andre up to the meeting with 
Arnold, and saying, "Let's go down and take a shot at the 
Britishers," they hid in the bushes and fired at the boat with 
their flintlock muskets. A sailor was wounded and the boat 
returned to the British sloop of war. The noise of the firing 
attracted the attention of Colonel Livingston who, with his 
command, was stationed at Verplanck's Point. He applied 
for a large gun which Arnold refused. Then he sent a four- 
pounder, which was his best artillery to Teller's Point, which 
encloses your harbor, and that little gun compelled the sloop 
of war to raise anchor and drop down the Hudson. The mus- 
ket shots of the two farmer's boys and the four-pounder on 
Teller's Point forced the land journey of Major Andre in an 
effort to regain his own lines,* and then followed his capture, 
the flight of Arnold, the exposure of the plot and the salvation 
of the country. 

There is another lesson in the tragedy of Andre, and that 
is, a military officer should always obey orders, and all persons 
in times of peril should find out about others without reveal- 
ing themselves. General Clinton's orders to Andre were, not 
to go within the American Lines, not to conceal his uniform, 
not to carry any papers, but his adventurous spirit got the 
better of his written instructions and he was captured. 






87 

Paulding was a prisoner of war who had escaped to the 
home of a sympathizer near the prison. He purchased for 
him an old British uniform. When he was stopped, Andre 
saw the uniform, supposed it was one of his own people and 
betrayed his position as a British officer. Paulding said after- 
ward that if Andre had said nothing except exhibit the pass 
which he had from General Arnold he would have let him go. 

So little is known of the subsequent history of Benedict 
Arnold, except in a general way, that greater detail might 
appropriately be put on record on this occasion. The story 
is one of tragedy, of the loyal devotion of a devoted woman 
to a husband who was unworthy of her affection. He died 
without revealing whether she ever fully understood the in- 
famy of his act. Arnold was an able, daring and tempestuous 
character without moral principle or self control. Washington 
made him the military commander of Philadelphia because his 
wound, received at Saratoga, unfitted him for the field. His 
extravagances led to a court martial. The court martial con- 
demned him. Washington could not do otherwise than ap- 
prove the findings of the court martial, and for that Arnold 
flew into a rage and opened communications with the British 
Commander. He was a military genius. He saw that West 
Point was the key to the situation, that there he could inflict 
the most telling blow and earn his reward. He asked for this 
command which Washington, who had unimpaired confidence 
in him, readily granted. 

The last act of the unfortunate Major Andre before the 
British Army evacuated Philadelphia was to organize a tourna- 
ment in which each knight had his lady, and his was the 
beautiful Peggy Shippen. The first thing that happened to 
General Arnold after he assumed command of Philadelphia 
was to meet Peggy Shippen and fall madly in love with her. 
The first act of Arnold when he had safely reached the Vul- 
ture was to write to General Washington begging him to be 
merciful to his wife, this same Peggy Shippen. 

The character of Washington comes into relief in two in- 
stances of this period. While he made every effort to capture 
Arnold and to exchange Andre for him, yet with a tender 
and fatherly care he shielded Mrs. Arnold, had her conveyed 



88 

in safety to her father in Philadelphia, and subsequently per- 
mitted her to pass through the lines to join her husband in 
New York. The second was old General Putnam, who al- 
ways self-reliant, egotistic and wrong-headed, had disobeyed 
an order. Washington's reprimand meant discipline and at 
the same time to save as far as possible the feelings of the 
old veteran, in writing a reproof he said: "My dear General, 
if anything goes wrong from my order, the blame is mine not 
yours." 

Arnold, with his wife and two children at the close of 
the war went over on the same ship with Cornwallis. He 
and his wife were received with the greatest attention by the 
King and Queen, but society refused to recognize them. They 
were at every court function, and King George and Queen 
Charlotte put themselves out of the way to show them courtesy, 
but no one else went near them or reecived them. Life was 
a solitude in their home and no doors were opened to them 
We have all felt in watching the doings of what is called 
society everywhere, whether at the Capitol or in the village, 
that it is governed by singular impulses in its recognition or 
rejection of new-comers. 

The Earl of Lauderdale made a speech in Parliament at- 
tacking the Duke of Richmond, in which he said that he did 
not know of any instance of political apostasy equal to the 
Duke of Richmond's except General Arnold's, and' that as the 
intended encampment was designed to overawe the Kingdom 
and the metropolis in particular and prevent a reform in 
Parliament, the Duke of Richmond was the most popular com- 
mander to command it, General Arnold being struck off the 
list. Arnold immediately challenged the Earl. He selected 
Lord Hawke as his second, while the Earl of Lauderdale chose 
the famous statesman Charles James Fox. They were to 
fire simultaneously. Arnold missed. The Earl refused to fire 
on the ground that he had no complaint against the General. 
Arnold sent for Fox, and said, "Tell your principal that un- 
less he fires I will so insult him that he cannot help it or be 
disgraced," whereupon Lauderdale said he would apologize. 
The apology was accepted and Lauderdale then called upon 
Mrs. Arnold and apologized to her. Instantly society changed 



8 9 

toward the family. The street was filled with carriages, coats 
of arms emblazoned on their panels, cards showered in from 
the most eminent, and invitations were extended to functions 
in town and great houses in the country. The devoted wife 
wrote to her father as to her condition pending the duel: 
"What I suffered for near a week cannot be described. The 
suppression of my feelings lest I should unman the General 
almost proved too much for me, and for some hours my reason 
was despaired of." 

Arnold who was anything but a good business man speed- 
ily lost the thirty thousand dollars he had received for his 
betrayal. Every venture and every speculation proved un- 
fortunate. Queen Charlotte had settled on their arrival upon 
Peggy a pension of five hundred pounds a year and one hun- 
dred pounds for each child. This had to support them during 
the nearly twenty years before Arnold died. Peggy's letters 
to her father are most pathetic in describing, as the children 
came along, how increasingly difficult it was to "keep up ap- 
pearances." 

Arnold disappears from the historic stage with his fa- 
mous meeting with Talleyrand at Falmouth on his last journey 
to the West Indies. Talleyrand was also at the inn. He had 
been expelled from France, England no longer wanted him 
and he was on his way to America. Learning that a dis- 
tinguished American General was in the hotel, he introduced 
himself, asked many questions which Arnold curtly and 
evasively answered. Talleyrand, however, was too great a 
diplomatist to be put off by bad manners even from a man 
who seemed to be so unhappy as Arnold, so he asked for 
letters of introduction to people in the United States who 
might be useful to him. "No," said the stranger, "that I 
cannot do. I am perhaps the only American who cannot give 
you letters to his own country. The ties which bound me 
are broken. I can never go back. I am Benedict Arnold." 
With that Arnold, with bowed head, quitted the room. 

One of the most pathetic illustrations and inheritance for 
vengeance for treason, and its unforgetfulness and unforgive- 
ness, was illustrated in a letter written by Mr. Shippen, then 
Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, to his daughter, Mrs. Arnold, 



90 

many years after she had settled in London. She had asked 
him if after this long absence she might not visit her old home 
and put her sons at an American school. The Chief Justice 
answered, "You had better not come, because the boys at 
school will make your children very uncomfortable." 

The shadow of the disgrace of their father followed the 
children. They were fine boys and a beautiful girl resembling 
her mother, and did their best. Of course, the British Govern- 
ment aided them to positions. The eldest went to India and 
became distinguished as a civilian. George and James entered 
the military service and were both killed in the Peninsular 
War. At the storming of Surinam a forlorn hope was to be 
led against the fort. James at once applied to the Colonel 
for permission to lead it because he said "he knew that his 
father was held a failure at his duty and he desired to do the 
best he could to redeem his name." His wish was granted, the 
fort was taken, but James was unharmed. Years later in the 
wars against Napoleon he died as he had wished, a soldier's 
death in Spain. 

It is the foible of every generation to think their problems 
more serious than those which were presented to the people 
of any other period. We are entering upon an industrial 
experiment amid the jubilant shouts of the authors of the new 
tariff, and are facing a currency crisis under the equally jubi- 
lant prophesies of the victors. According to our standards, 
we are happy or unhappy, hopeful or hopeless. Our brilliant, 
most original and most distinguished citizen, Colonel Roose- 
velt sails away, firing a broadside which echoes over the 
land on behalf of what he calls reforms and those who dis- 
agree with him call revolution. But we are living in calm 
political and social conditions so great that they cannot be 
compared with the troublous times which existed when this 
village was organized on October 13, 181 3. The bitterness of 
the Revolutionary War was still acute. The memories of out- 
rages committed in this neutral ground by neighbors upon 
neighbors were still fresh. Paulding. Williams and Van Wort, 
the captors of Andre, were alive. Paulding died five years later 
and was buried in the old Van Cortlandtville Cemetery at 
Peekskill. Isaac Van Wort died ten years later, and was buried 



9i 

in the old Greenburg Churchyard near Elmsford. Daniel Will- 
iams died in Schoharie County eighteen years later, and was 
buried in the old stone fort at Schoharie Court House. 

The general upheaval in National politics in 1813 and 1814 
made Henry Clay Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
and brought Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun into public 
life as Members of Congress. These three statesmen became 
the famed triumvirate who moulded and controlled the do- 
mestic and foreign policies of the United States for the next 
forty years. 

An illustration of the survival of the bitterness of those 
times, even in another generation, is the advice given to me 
by my father when I commenced the practice of the law in 
this county in 1858. His father had been a soldier in the 
Revolutionary Army, and his grandfather had spent the fam- 
ily patrimony in raising a company for the same army. He 
named five families all well-known in Westchester, and said, 
"My son, never have any financial dealings with those people. 
Never accept one of them as a client. Never believe one of 
them as a witness. If they appear on a jury, challenge them 
peremptorily, for their fathers were Tories or Skinners in 
the Revolution. 

But in 1813, Patriots, Tories and Skinners were among 
the population of Ossining. They all joined in the formation 
of this corporation. Beyond these borders the world was in 
agitation and trouble to an almost unparalleled degree. Na- 
poleon's invasion of Russia had been a failure, and his army 
of a million of men annihilated. The allies were marching 
upon Paris and his abdication and retirement to Elba were 
imminent. War had been declared against Great Britain by 
Madison, and there were no obstructions in the way of forts 
or mines or modern appliances to prevent the British fleets 
coming up the Hudson, or going, as they did, up the Potomac. 
Political partisanship was never more intense. The leaders 
of the combatants were most picturesque figures in our State 
history. Daniel D. Tompkins, a native of Scarsdale, a few 
miles east of here, twice Governor of the State and Vice Presi- 
dent of the United States, leading the one side, and DeWitt 
Clinton the other. Tompkins raised forty thousand men for 



92 

the defense of New York's frontier, and to secure the money 
for the purpose pledged his own property and indorsed the 
notes of the State. Clinton represented the anti-war part), 
and most of the leading citizens of our County sympathized 
with him and joined in the great meeting in New York to 
protest. The bitterness against Great Britain growing out of 
the Revolutionary War was still intense, as was also the sym- 
pathy and friendship for France. Our people were almost 
unanimously with Napoleon in his tremendous conflict, though 
under his embargoes and orders twice as many ships were 
seized and destroyed, and twice as much property sold or 
burned as by the English, nevertheless we were hot-footed for 
war with England, while we forgave Napoleon. Posterity, 
however, justifies that war. With our race no man can hope 
for popularity in public life who opposes a war after it has 
begun. The most eminent men in New England and the 
most eminent sons of Massachusetts and Connecticut were 
driven into obscurity because they were members of the Hart- 
ford Convention which was a protest against the continuance 
of the struggle and a demand for peace. Madison received, 
as against DeWitt Clinton, the votes of nearly two-thirds of 
the electoral college because he was pledged to declare war. 
Clinton resigned from the United States Senate to become 
Mayor of New York. At that time the Chief Magistracy of 
our metropolis was regarded as the higher honor. Times have 
changed. The Mayor of New York had almost unlimited 
powers. He was Chief Magistrate at the head of every de- 
partment, and possessed judicial functions. He could hold any 
other office, for Clinton was at the same time Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor of the State. 

It was about the time of the formation of this village cor- 
poration that DeWitt Clinton, having personally made the sur- 
veys, started the project of the Erie Canal. Tompkins arrayed 
himself on the other side, and the question became political. 
Clinton was driven from public life, but in 1817 returned as 
Governor of the State, and carried his great project into 
execution. He was driven again from public life, but the 
people called him once more to the Chief Magistracy, when 
he completed the work. He had the good fortune, which 



93 

comes to few originators, of participating in the triumph of 
its completion. He carried the waters of Lake Erie through 
the canal to the Hudson, and down the Hudson until he had 
poured them into the Atlantic Ocean. He gave to his State 
the highway to the west, which was the outlet for an interior 
empire which created States, cities, villages and industries 
which made the City of New York the metropolis of the West- 
ern Hemisphere, and made his State the Empire State of the 
Union. 

An echo of those distant times which shows how history 
often repeats itself were these lines of a song that was sung 
before Clinton was elected : 

"Oh a ditch he would dig from the lakes to the sea, 
The eighth of the world's matchless wonders to be. 
Good land, how absurd ! But why should you grin ? 
It will do to bury this mad author within." 

After his election his friends sang this song: 

"DeWitt Clinton is dead, St. Tammany said, 

"And all the papooses with laughter were weeping. 
But Clinton arose and confounded his foes, 
The cunning old fox had only been sleeping." 

It is the glory of Daniel D. Tompkins that in co-operation 
with that most distinguished citizen of our County of his time, 
Chief Justice John Jay, he passed the law under which, giving 
ten years to the owners to adjust themselves to the new condi- 
tions, slavery should be abolished in the State of New York. 

According to some of our political philosophers, your fa- 
thers sadly misunderstood the true principles of Democracy. 
They had been living and exercising here for a generation pure 
democracy of which we hear so much. They had that ideal 
of direct government, the town meeting, and yet by a unani- 
mous vote they decided to establish representative government. 
Six years before Fulton's invention, the first steamboat, the 
Clermont, had carried passengers from New York to Albany 
and return, and the success of the undertakings had revolution- 



94 

ized the transportation system upon the Hudson River. The 
farming country back to the Connecticut line was pouring in 
here with its products to be carried to New York, and the stores 
were securing from the city the supplies for this rural popula- 
tion. Docks and piers and wharves were required. Streets were 
to be laid out with some degree of uniformity. Public improve- 
ments were to be planned. An educational system was to be 
adopted. Mount Pleasant Academy, one of the first, and after- 
ward one of the most famous in the State, was built the next 
year. From this beginning came other institutions of learn- 
ing, until Ossining had a nation-wide reputation for the number 
and excellence of its schools. Those old-fashioned people de- 
cided that the preacher and the merchant, the lawyer and the 
farmer, the doctor and the mechanic, all intent upon earning 
a living and their energies absorbed in their own career, could 
not, by assembling in the public square and in open meeting, 
decide on the moment upon the harmonious creation and execu- 
tion of all these enterprises. So they resolved to form the 
corporation of this village and delegate to their chosen repre- 
sentatives, the President, the Board of Trustees, the Highway 
Commissioner, the Police, the Justice of the Peace, the car- 
rying out of their will. The prosperity of this town from 
that day to this, the fact that there has never been a single 
voice raised to return to the old town meeting system, is the 
emphatic verdict of one hundred years of experience for repre- 
sentative government. 

Permit me to tell of two experiences of my own connected 
with your village. About fifty years ago I delivered an address 
before the Westchester County Bible Society. Among those 
in attendance was the Reverend Doctor Phraner, for a half cen- 
tury pastor of one of your churches, and who passed away 
recently venerable and universally respected in his ninety-odd 
years of age. Some time after the meeting of the Bible Society 
he called upon me at my home in Peekskill and suggested that 
as a young lawyer I should move to Sing Sing and make it 
my home. The reason he gave was that the local lawyers were 
a bad lot. I knew those local lawyers, and several of them, 
especially the late Francis Larkin, were very able and very 
honorable members of the bar. 



95 

When I first ran for the Lower House of our New York 
Legislature fifty-two years ago, I was told that unless I se- 
cured the support of one of your most active citizens, an ec- 
centric and successful man, I could not be elected. I addressed 
a meeting in the public square, and afterward this gentleman 
insisted upon adjourning to the American House for refresh- 
ments. At that time temperance was unknown. It was an 
insult to refuse a drink. Most of the public men whom I met 
in the Legislature died from alcoholism. I had very decided 
notions for my own future on this question, but at the same 
time I could not afford to offend this prominent politician. So 
I arranged with the bartender to give me mint juleps, inno- 
cent of anything but water and mint, while my host indulged 
in his favorite whiskey. At midnight I had defied microbes 
and germs by swallowing about a gallon of Sing Sing water, 
and he about the same quantity of Sing Sing whiskey. He 
stumped the district afterward for me both times I ran, declar- 
ing everywhere that I had a great future before me because I 
was a second Daniel Webster and had the strongest head in 
the State of New York. 

The inspiration of the young people of Westchester in 
every generation has been the distinguished men who have 
honored its history. Of the Revolutionary period few in our 
country were as eminent as John Jay, the first Chief Justice 
of the United States, and the diplomat who negotiated our first 
treaty with Great Britain which secured to our country ines- 
timable benefits, and the picturesque Gouverneur Morris, sol- 
dier, diplomat, man of letters and wit, and the friend of Wash- 
ington. It was in his little cottage at Fordham that Edgar 
Allen Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" and "The Bells," near him 
Rodman Drake sang of the flag and its significance, and Wood- 
worth gave to the world that never-to-be-forgotten ballad "The 
Old Oaken Bucket." Fenimore Cooper, at his home in Ma- 
maroneck, failed in his first essay in literature, but while visit- 
ing the venerable John Jay at his home in Bedford he heard the 
story of Enoch Crosby, the spy of the Revolution. No more 
resourceful, daring and courageous gatherer of secret inform- 
tion at daily peril of his life from the officers of both armies ever 
lived than Enoch Crosby. He had the entire confidence of 



9 6 

General Washington, but necessarily could not have that of 
others, and was often in more danger that he would be caught 
with the loyalists whom he had betrayed from our own troops 
than from the enemy. He enlisted in the Continental Army 
about the time of the Battle of Lexington, and filed with Wash- 
ington only one request when he undertook the dangerous task of 
a spy, that if caught and executed his name should be vindicated. 
His exploits were so remarkable, his escapes so marvelous, 
his accomplishments so miraculous that it only needed the touch 
of genius to picture the facts to make a story of absorbing 
interest. James Fenimore Cooper's genius was equal to the 
task. The "Spy" made his reputation immediately, and he be- 
came one of the foremost of American authors. Cooper, you 
remember, calls Crosby in the novel Harvey Birch. Crosby re- 
sided in the village, and his son lived and died here. 

Washington Irving lived for thirty years your neighbor 
at Sunnyside, and there wrote his immortal life of General 
Washington. The suggestion and the inspiration came because 
he had never forgotten that as a little boy Washington had 
placed his hand on his head with a cheerful salute, and that 
at Sunnyside and at Wolfert's Roost he was surrounded by 
the atmosphere of Washington's achievements. 

Close by was White Plains, Washington's first great bat- 
tle, and Dobbs Ferry, where Washington and Rochambeau 
met and organized the Yorktown campaign which ended the 
war, and where the army encamped at the close of the war 
prior to its triumphal entry into New York upon its evacuation 
by the British. 

Above him was Verplanck's Point, where Washington and 
Rochambeau, after the declaration of peace, gave a final re- 
view of their two armies, and Rochambeau, noting the won- 
derful improvement of the American troops since he first saw 
them, said to Washington, "Your army looks like an army of 
Prussians," at that time the highest compliment a military man 
could convey, for it meant the veterans of Frederick the Great. 

Irving had redeemed American literature from the re- 
proach of the Edinburgh reviewer contained in the question, 
"Who reads an American book?" But he did more for our 
neighborhood in peopling its shores by the legend of Sleepy 



97 

Hollow, and the sleep of Rip Van Winkle, and the Voyages 
of the Dutch Navigators on the Hudson, so that while we 
have not the legends of the Rhine, we have beautiful tales of 
love, adventure, domestic felicity and infelicity, with some of 
the mysterious and the supernatural, to add to the incom- 
parable physical beauties of our Hudson River. 

Among the successful men of this town were Admiral 
Worden who, in command of the Monitor in the battle of 
Chesapeake Bay, ended the naval power of the Confederacy. 
Darius Ogden Mills, who became one of the founders of the 
State of California, and John T. Hoffman, Governor of our 
State. 

An incident too trivial to find a place in the pages of the 
sober histories is nevertheless a tradition of sufficient local 
interest to be recorded. The Count de Rochambeau, when he 
received orders from home to take his army to Newport and 
embark for the West Indies, was encamped on the Crum- 
pond Road, a few miles to the north. As he was mounted 
and about to march, surrounded by his brilliant staff, and 
followed by his army of six thousand veterans, a constable 
stepped up and said, "Sir, you are under arrest." "What for?" 
said the astonished hero of many battlefields in Europe and 
of glorious achievement in America. "Because," said the 
constable, "your soldiers have used an orchard for fire- 
wood, and the owner has sworn out a warrant against you 
as an absconding debtor." The monumental and colossal 
audacity of the situation touched the French humor of the 
Count and he inquired how great was the demand. The an- 
swer was "Three thousand dollars in gold," which was more 
than any entire farm was worth in that neighborhood at that 
period, when it took one thousand dollars of Continental cur- 
rency to buy a pair of boots. However, the Count left a 
thousand dollars, the issue to be decided by the court, and the 
damage was ultimately assessed by the man's neighbors at 
four hundred dollars. 

De Tocqueville who, next to James Bryce, is the only for- 
eigner who ever understood and eloquently wrote about our 
institutions. Standing on the heights in the rear of this vil- 
lage, and gazing upon the Hudson, he said, "I must except 



98 

the Bay of Naples because of the opinion of the civilized world, 
but with that exception the world has no such scenery." 

It was a happy incident and a wonderful foresight which 
located your village on the site of this encampment of the 
Mohegan Indians. We who were born along this river may 
travel all over the world, may admit the beauty or the grandeur 
of other spots famed for their picturesqueness and beauty, but 
we return to the Hudson convinced that it has no superior, 
and doubtful if it has any equal. The four-pounder which 
from Teller's Point was so instrumental in saving American 
independence has on every Fourth of July from the square 
in your village been an added inspiration to patriotism and 
good citizenship. It sent forth at the beginning of the Civil 
War as gallant a company as fought on either side during that 
memorable struggle. The year after the formation of the cor- 
poration of your village the War of 1812 between the United 
State and Great Britain was brought to a close by the Treaty 
of Ghent. Next year will be celebrated one hundred years of 
peace between the mother country and ours. In the mean- 
time these two English-speaking people have grown to a domi- 
nant influence in the affairs of the world and in the advance- 
ment of its civilization and liberties. This one hundred years of 
peace has been of benefits so incalculable that they can only 
be imagined, they cannot be adequately portrayed. You, in 
common with all the world in your century so coincident with 
this one hundred years of peace, have been conspicuously the 
participants of its blessings. I devoutly hope that continuing 
prosperity may mark each succeeding one hundredth birthday 
of your town, and that the five hundredth may have a civic 
celebration which will be of as great general interest to our 
country as the five hundredth of Heidelberg was to Germany. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Dinner Given by the Lotos Club, Satur- 
day Evening, October 25, 1913, to His Serene 
Highness, Prince Albert of Monaco. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : For about half a cen- 
tury this club has been entertaining men of eminence in every 
department of endeavor. It loves to decorate achievement. 
Those distinguished in literature, in journalism, in art upon 
the dramatic and the lyric stage, by invention or discovery, 
have received our welcome, and also the accidents of politics, 
like Presidents and Governors. 

This is the first time that we have been honored by the 
presence of a reigning sovereign. It is not on account of 
his hereditary rank that we are glad to see him, but because 
he is much more than a reigning sovereign — a scientist of 
world-wide fame and an inventor and discoverer. The 
learned societies of many capitals have paid him high com- 
pliments, elected him to their membership. As a yachts- 
man he appeals to our sporting sense. Our people gained 
a fondness for the sea when one hundred men, women and 
children braved its dangers and sought its safety on the May- 
flower of seventy tons in 1620. True to their ideals, they have 
reached in less than three hundred years over ninety millions, 
the conquest of a continent and one of the world powers of 
the globe. This mastery of the sea was with John Paul Jones, 
the founder of our Navy, and subsequently with our clipper 
ships which were the despair of maritime nations. When un- 
wise partisan legislation took our mercantile marine off the 
ocean and banished our flag from the ports of the world, our 
sporting spirit kept alive the spirit of the seas through our 
yachts, bringing over in their first contest the International 
Cup and keeping it since against all competitors. 

Still, it is not as a yachtsman that we welcome the Prince. 
It is because of the wonderful things he does with his yacht. 
Poets have sung through all the ages of the music of the 
spheres. It became a fixed tradition that the myriad stars in 



IOO 



the Milky Way, and other myriad stars in other milky ways, 
again and again filling the immeasurable universe, were held 
in their places as suns, and revolving in their orbits, because 
of the music of the spheres. 

But now the American admiral in midocean lifts his cap 
as there comes from the air the strain of "The Star Spangled 
Banner" ; the English admiral bares his head as there comes to 
him the music of "God Save the King," while the German 
pays his tribute to "The Watch on the Rhine." There, in calm 
or in storm, these patriotic airs come to those naval officers' 
ears from an invisible choir. We cannot explore, we are un- 
able to explain, the mastery of the music of the spheres, but 
these national anthems, flowing on the waves of the air, are 
sent forth by an invention of the Prince from the deck of his 
yacht through a wireless telephone. Statesmen of all coun- 
tries, while preaching peace, are working with feverish haste 
to enlarge the size and increase the number of their dread- 
noughts and to stimulate inventive genius to discover new ele- 
ments of destruction. Perhaps there may be here a potent 
agency for universal peace. It may be that with these great 
fleets listening to the invisible choir, giving them interchange- 
ably each other's inspiration of their national anthems, that 
the harmony which conquers wild beasts and leads them to 
follow the player, may first temper and then allay the pas- 
sions for war. 

The wireless machinery of the Prince's yacht is so power- 
ful that it keeps him always in touch with one continent or 
the other. His own inventive mind has added many things 
to its usefulness. We live in an age of wonders. They are so 
common that they have ceased either to excite our admiration 
or stir our blood. It is a rare event that makes men or women 
now rise up and take notice, but the records of time may be 
searched and nowhere can be found any event which so 
touches the human heart and so stirs the imagination as 
the rescue of the passengers of the unfortunate Volturno. But 
for the wireless, it would have been another of those tragedies 
of the sea which are never accounted for and whose victims are 
never heard from. The hero of the hour is the wireless opera- 
tor who, without exception, stands by his post until the last 



IOI 

moment, and, with the captain, is the last to leave the ship. 
The cries of seven hundred human beings concentrated in these 
electric waves went north, south, east and west. They reached 
the Englishman, one hundred miles distant, and the German, 
one hundred and twenty-five, and the Frenchman, one hundred 
and fifty, and with doubled speed all altered their courses and 
flew to the rescue. The oil tank steamer, also illustrating mod- 
ern invention, arrived to throw upon the mountain waves the 
calming influence of oil. 

When future generations look back to this age, this in- 
stance will stand out conspicuously among its many marvels, 
and when the heroes of this age take their niches in the temple 
of fame, one of the highest will be occupied by the statue of 
Marconi. 

All the scientific talent of the Middle Ages was devoted 
to turning the baser metals into gold. Alchemy, with its one 
purpose to discover gold, was the pursuit and the bane of 
genius. This age has learned much easier methods of secur- 
ing gold. It is not by finding it in the results of the retort 
and the laboratory, nor in the hazards and accidents of gold 
mining, but it is by possessing that talent for organization 
which controls the necessaries of life. The Trusts have done 
much to accumulate gold for a few, but there arises now and 
then a special master of men and of markets who, with no 
other advantages than are possessed by his neighbors, becomes 
supreme by the possession of the talent for acquisition of the 
precious metal. A conspicuous example came to our people 
and to the world by the death of the merchant Altman. With 
the same tools, under the same laws, and with equal oppor- 
tunities of his neighbors and competitors during his life, he 
nevertheless leaves his vast business to those who have been 
his associates, and to the city in which he had his opportunity 
a priceless gift of unequaled and unsurpassed works of art 
for the education of succeeding generations until the end of 
time. 

The scientific mind of our day, however, is devoted en- 
tirely to the benefit and uplifting of the human race. It 
abandons the fields for gain and enters the laboratories in the 
research work which is minimizing the dangers of disease and 



102 



extirpating the perils of plagues. It is risking life in adventure 
to probe the secrets and reduce still further to the service of 
mankind the sea and the air. It is in this field that our guest 
has won his chief distinction. His yacht is his home, a pleasure 
boat and a laboratory. He has found things about currents 
and tides which are of great value to the navigator. He has 
dropped his search line five miles into the ocean, and biologists 
in all countries have learned by his discoveries. He has found 
that there are living creatures in these vast depths which bear 
a pressure of the water above them beyond the weight of the 
Washington Monument or of Westminster Abbey. They re- 
lieve this easily borne pressure for new fields by rising grad- 
ually until a million tons becomes a thousand, and a thousand 
becomes a hundred, then there is no pressure at all on the sur- 
face. But the explorations from the yacht have demonstrated 
that when these living organisms are pulled suddenly to the 
surface they die from the want of pressure. That is a brand- 
new discovery. Our graveyards are filled with those who 
died from too much pressure. Pressure on the brain from 
overwork, pressure upon overloaded stomachs, pressure upon 
overcharged kidneys, pressure from worry and anxiety and 
from overstrained nerves keep the undertaker busy and furnish 
the grave digger with his living. So, it is a pleasure to learn 
that there are living things in this world who die for want of 
pressure. The example seems to enforce the old-fashioned 
lesson of moderation ; not too much pressure to kill, not too 
little to take away ambition, but just enough pressure for suc- 
cess and longevity. 

This lengthened line has contributed another blow to our 
most cherished beliefs. This line of the poet has always been 
a favorite: "Full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark 
unfathomed caves of ocean bear." The Prince has fathomed 
those caves. There are no gems of purest ray there. This 
beautiful and hopeful creation of the imagination takes its 
place under practical examination with the silver lining of the 
clouds. We all know the story of the two busted speculators 
who used their last money to buy a balloon, equipped it with 
the proper instruments and rose above the clouds to corner 
the silver. 



io3 

The people are always interested in the sports of their 
rulers. They delight to know that the King, or the Prince, or 
the President plays. They are mighty curious to know how 
he does it. The race course is said to be the sport of kings, 
and so it is. Every crowned head in Europe geos with his 
family to the races, and if you are in Paris on a certain day 
in June, you will see the President of the Republic in his State 
Coach, with outriders and an escort of cavalry, going on Sun- 
day morning to the Grand Prix. The great race of England 
is the Derby. But our Presidents cannot indulge in this sport 
of Kings and French Presidents because the only official who 
is conspicuous upon our race course is the sheriff. King Ed- 
ward won the Derby. King George is the best shot on the 
grouse moors in Great Britain. He escapes from appeals 
which may be made to him from David Lloyd George, John 
Redmond or Sir Edward Carson to use or not to use the veto 
power by rejoicing in his prowess in phenomenal bags of birds. 
The Czar and the Kaiser chase the deer through the forests, 
while the King of Italy, reviving as he is constantly doing 
with the applause of his people the prestige and power of An- 
cient Rome, renews the life in his Virgil and Horace, by chas- 
ing the wild boar over the hills. 

The only sport which seems to be reserved for our Presi- 
dents is golf. Having watched them at golf, I think I see 
the reason for it. When the President, after an hour of un- 
successful struggle with the Senators and Members of Con- 
gress of his party to make them follow his lead, is stripped 
for the fray and has the weapon in his hand and sees the 
little ball on the ground, that ball grows to the size of a Sena- 
tor. When he swats it, he takes a mental satisfaction in the 
discipline. When he puts in the hole, he says, "Mr. Senator 
from New York, I reckon you will now support my currency 
suggestions." 

Pessimists are always despairing of the Republic. There 
is, however, no reason for this. We have both patriots among 
our people who are generally right though sometimes mistaken 
and efficient public servants. An incident, which occurred to 
a friend of mine when he recently landed from Europe, proves 
this efficiency. He brought with him a large number of 



104 

pheasants he had shot in England. As game birds, they are 
admissible under the law ; as plumage, prohibited by the new 
tariff. The genius of the inspectors was equal to the occasion. 
They sat down on the dock, plucked the feathers, threw them 
into the harbor and then delivered the game. 

The late Governor Woodruff was a member of this club. 
He was one of the most genial, most lovable and most capable 
men in either social or political life. Truly of him it may be 
said, "None knew him but to love him." He had a camp in 
the Adirondacks, called "Kill Kare." He loved to entertain 
statesmen there by the score. At the other end of the lake he 
had two bears chained to a rock. They were trained to en- 
tertain the statesmen. He knew that to kill a bear was a dis- 
tinction highly prized by a Governor. These bears were 
trained so that, with their acute wild hearing and sight, the 
moment the gun flashed they dropped. I think they survived 
several years, contributing to the hunting stories of the ama- 
teur sportsmen. 

I reject with scorn the suggestion that Buffalo Bill had 
for his distinguished guest, the Prince, a trained grizzly bear. 
I am sure that the Prince was so fine a sportsman that his 
unerring aim brought down his grizzly. 

Well, gentlemen, we hope that this sportsman, scientist, 
inventor, explorer, discoverer and true democrat, will continue 
his beneficient career and round out. as long as he wishes, 
life after his century has closed. 



SPEECH BY HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Annual Dinner of the St. Nicholas 

Society of New York at Delmonico's, December 

6, 1913. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the St. Nicholas 
Society : It gives me great pleasure to be once more with my 
brethren of St. Nicholas. During the almost half century that 
I have been a member, I can recall very few occasions when 
there were so many acute questions agitating the public mind. 
As a rule neither politics nor religion are permitted on out- 
festive occasions. 

We meet to celebrate the virtues of our ancestors, to 
congratulate them upon what they did for humanity in im- 
perishable principles which have survived all the ages, and 
upon their good judgment in selecting New York as the place 
to which they would carry their brains, their faith, their en- 
terprise and their integrity. We congratulate ourselves that 
we had such intelligent, far-seeing and admirable forebears. 

During the stress and anxieties of the Civil War we de- 
parted frequently from our custom to consider, because we 
could not help it, questions which so nearly affected our coun- 
try, ourselves and our posterity. If serious topics are to be 
considered, there is among the descendants of the Dutch a 
broader-minded and more charitable platform than can be 
found anywhere else. 

New York is famous for the societies organized by the 
different nationalities which constitute its cosmopolitan popu- 
lation, and all of them have for their main purpose keeping 
alive the traditions of the Fatherland, but incidentally they 
are charitable organizations with large funds. Those funds 
are constantly called upon to meet the necessities of newly 
arrived or shipwrecked members of their race. It is a fine 
tribute to the strength of the old Holland stock that the thrift, 
which made them in the middle ages the merchants and bankers 
of the world, has descended so unimpaired to us that, while 
we also have a charitable fund, there are no applicants for 
its benefits and there are no beneficiaries charged upon it. 



io6 

In the darkness of the middle ages Holland was the beacon 
light for civil and religious liberty. All around was intel- 
lectual darkness and religious bigotry and persecution, but the 
Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, fleeing from persecution, 
found hospitality in Holland. There they could exercise their 
faith with independence and liberty so long as they did not 
interfere with the liberty of others. It was this asylum, pro- 
tecting the bigoted and narrow-minded Puritans fleeing from 
England, that transformed them in little more than ten years 
into that broad-minded and liberty-loving little band of Pil- 
grims, which, in the cabin of the Mayflower, formed the con- 
stitution upon which rests our institutions. 

It is an interesting fact that after the people of Leyden 
were relieved from the siege, during which they had endured 
with wonderful courage untold privations and sufferings, when 
they were asked what reward they desired as a monument to 
their loyalty and patriotism, their answer was, "Give us a 
university." That university is still one of the best seats of 
learning there is in the world. The results of this liberal 
mindedness was that the Hollanders gave in that dark age to 
literature and law Erasmus, Grotius and others whose books 
are living lessons to-day, and to art Rubens, Rembrandt, Paul 
Potter and other immortals, whose works now command prices 
which in the aggregate would be almost equal to the assessed 
value of the entire property of Holland. I sometimes wonder 
what Rembrandt and Rubens in the other world must say to 
each other when they find the pictures which yielded them 
about one hundred dollars, or at the most four hundred a 
piece, are bought by American collectors for five hundred 
thousand dollars, a sum so vast as compared with the money 
values in times in which they lived and the figures with which 
they were familiar that it is possible that even as spirits they 
are not able to grasp them. 

I believe that it is impossible in any gathering now to 
avoid a word upon current conditions ; they are too novel and 
have a future so full of hope or peril, that we cannot help 
expressing our thoughts. In my college days at Yale, New 
England clergymen were never permitted to mention politics 
in their sermons, but on Thanksgiving Day the pent-up pas- 



107 

sions of the year were given free and unrestrained expression. 
One of the greatest preachers in New England of that period 
was the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon of the Center Church, New 
Haven. He was a great theologian, but nature had built him 
for a statesman. He was an intense abolitionist while his 
congregation was composed mostly of the rich merchants and 
manufacturers who were selling their goods to Southern slave- 
holders, so the iniquities of slavery were tabooed and their 
consciences were closed by the weight of their pocketbooks. 
On Thanksgiving Day Dr. Bacon had his opportunity; he 
scarified these commercial Christians with words of living fire, 
he endeavored to reach their consciences, or, if they had none, 
to implant some in them ; he drew pictures of the horrors of 
slavery which have never been equalled, he lashed the sinners 
in a vain effort to drive them to the performance of their 
Christian patriotic and civic duties. Such an effort on the 
part of Dr. Bacon on any other Sunday would have led to 
his immediate dismissal from the church, but in the freedom 
of Thanksgiving Day these sinners listened, went home, gorged 
themselves with the enormous amount of the good things 
which make a Thanksgiving dinner and then complacently 
patting their stomachs remarked to one another, "The Doctor 
was never so fine as to-day." 

Suppose this is our Thanksgiving Day, though I am far 
from being Dr. Bacon. We have just had in our city the 
most remarkable election in recent times ; it seems to indicate 
a revival of civic duty and interest in public affairs among 
all our citizens, which promises good government for all the 
future. The press and the people are predicting that this is 
the end of Tammany Hall, and there is an open revolt within 
the walls of that ancient organization which threatens its dis- 
ruption. Much as we would like such an event to come about, 
I warn you, as the result of my long experience in politics, 
covering a period greater than most of you have lived, that 
this end of Tammany will not occur. An organization, which 
has lasted so long and is so deeply embedded in our civic life, 
cannot be put out of business in one election. Recently I had 
occasion, in preparing an historical address, to look into the 
conditions prevailing in our city a hundred years ago. I 



io8 

found that DeWitt Clinton was running for Governor, and 
the issue was, should the Erie Canal be built or not ? Clinton 
stood for the construction of the canal ; that great waterway, 
opening as it did the Great Lakes to the ocean, was one of 
the main factors in settling the West and Northwest, in mak- 
ing New York the Empire State and our City the Metropolis 
of the continent. 

Tammany of that day, a century ago, went to Clinton 
and wanted to know if he would give them the contracts for 
the construction of the canal. He positively refused and an- 
nounced that they would be given impartially to the highest 
bidders and the construction supervised by State officials. 
Tammany thereupon decided against Clinton and especially 
against the extravagance of this project, shouting that it 
would bankrupt the State and be of no benefit. Clinton was 
triumphantly elected and the Erie Canal constructed. Every- 
body at that time joyously predicted the fall of Tammany 
Hall and its final disruption. A large number of its mem- 
bership left and joined in the general condemnation. One hun- 
dred years have passed during which Tammany has had many 
crises, some defeats and many victories, but it is still in the 
ring. The reason is in our human nature. People love to 
fight in a compact and militant organization. There are still 
thousand upon thousands who would rather take their chances 
of sharing in "honest graft" than join in an effort to make 
it impossible. 

There is a singular indifference to the manner in which 
public moneys are spent and that indifference enables the con- 
tractor to have his opportunity. So long as the contractor 
can control party leaders and the organization, and the party 
organization can control public officers who give the contracts 
and the inspectors who supervise their performance, so long 
we will have the contractors generally successful, so long we 
will have the millions of dollars voted for good roads, which 
ought to be permanent and whose benefits are incalculable, 
squandered upon mud substitutes which disappear with the 
rains, the snows and the frosts. 

We are again, for the few times fortunately in our his- 
tory, having an acute crisis in our neighboring republic of 



109 

Mexico. When there is danger of our country being involved 
in war, it is the duty of the good citizen to support the Presi- 
dent. In the patriotism, good intentions and high intelligence of 
Mr. Wilson we all have confidence. His declaration, that so 
long as he can prevent it there will be no armed intervention 
and, therefore, no bloody war, is heartily approved, but his view 
of the duty of the United States in the Mexican crisis is cer- 
tainly novel and questionable. It is that our Government will 
not recognize Huerta as President and that Huerta must not 
be a candidate for re-election, and that if he is re-elected, we 
will still refuse to recognize him as President of Mexico. This 
is a curious position and we wonder where the authority is 
for the President of one Republic to say to the President of 
another that he must get out and that he cannot be reinstated 
even by the people. 

I have a friend, a very intelligent man, who has lived for 
twenty years in Mexico. He writes me, "All my interests, 
business and accumulations are in this country, my family is 
here, my children have grown up here, I have no place in 
the United States, and here I must remain. Under the pro- 
visions of the Mexican constitution, if the President and the 
Vice-President resign or die, the Mexican Congress elects a 
provisional President who holds office until the next election. 
The present Congress was elected with Madero and is, there- 
fore, legitimately in office ; it has with unanimity elected Huerta 
provisional President ; his title, therefore, is constitutional and 
legal. On this account every other nation in the world, except 
the United States, has recognized the President and his gov- 
ernment. The failure of the United States to do so, and 
especially the declaration that he must resign or the govern- 
ment will never be recognized, has had most disastrous results. 
It has started up marauding bands of banditti all over the 
country, who say that under this attitude of the United States 
the Monroe doctrine will protect them from foreign inter- 
vention and that the sympathies of the American Government 
will be with them rather than with the legitimate government 
of the country. This attitude of the United States has wrecked 
the credit of Mexico so that she cannot borrow money to 
meet her obligations or enforce the laws. If the United States 



no 

had recognized Huerta, as all other governments did," this 
gentleman says, "that Huerta, who is a trained soldier and 
a strong man, would within three months have dispersed the 
bandits, restored peace, order and law and protection for lives 
and property throughout the Republic," but now, he thinks, 
the result will be chaos. The attitude of our President is 
called "watchful waiting" ; it seems to be rather an adoption 
of Christian Science methods. I believe that the faith in- 
culcated by Christian Science healers in many instances and 
upon many temperaments is eminently successful, but its effi- 
cacy on a nation of sixteen millions of people, only three 
millions of whom can read or write is at least an interesting 
experiment. 

There has been much criticism of the diplomatic appoint- 
ments of this administration. I have been familiar with all 
of our Ministers and Ambassadors to Great Britain since the 
Civil War. They have been a very remarkable and distin- 
guished selection of diplomats. I met our present Ambassador, 
Mr. Page, in London last summer, and I believe that he will 
line up to the full stature of what is expected of an Ameri- 
can Ambassador to the Court of St. James. I was amused 
by the report in one of our papers of a banquet given to one 
of the departing diplomats by his fellow citizens in the West. 
In his speech he is reported to have said, "I was born in 
Europe ; when I became of age I had two ambitions : the first 
to get rich — I have accomplished that by coming here and 
going into the brewery business ; my second was to get into good 
society, and, therefore, I have sought and secured the ap- 
pointment to the Balkan States." Let us hope that the society 
among these mountaineers will meet his highest expectations 
of what good society is. 

We of the St. Nicholas are grateful to the President for 
the selection that he has made of our Minister to Holland. 
Never has there been a more ideal selection of Ministers to 
the Netherlands than Dr. Van Dyke. His name is Dutch, 
his ancestry Dutch ; he represents the highest type of intel- 
lectual and patriotic Americans and will shed lustre upon the 
office, his country and his race, whose virtues we are cele- 
brating here to-night. All hail to Minister Van Dyke ! 



Ill 



We are next year to celebrate with imposing ceremonies 
on both sides of the Atlantic the completion of a hundred 
years of peace between the United States and Great Britain. 
It is a most inspiring event and the results of this century 
of peace upon the history of the world, the welfare of hu- 
manity, the advance of civilization and the enlargement of 
liberty are simply incalculable. Already committees have been 
formed in this country and Great Britain, who are preparing 
a program of historical interest and importance. But another 
centennial has been lost sight of. It is of peculiar importance 
here to-night. This year is the hundredth anniversay of the 
liberty of Holland, which should be celebrated by every per- 
son who has Holland blood in his or her veins with gratitude 
and enthusiasm. 

Napoleon had taken Holland under his authority by mak- 
ing the Dutch accept his brother Joseph as their King. Joseph, 
finding that he could not protect his people against the ra- 
pacity of his mighty brother, resigned his office. All the 
healthy young men of the country were drafted into the 
French Army; most of them had been lost in the disastrous 
Russian campaign ; taxes had been imposed to an extent that 
was confiscatory, the decrees and embargoes of Napoleon had 
ruined the commerce upon which Holland depended for her 
living as well as her prosperity. 

Patriotic citizens met, as they had done many times in 
preceding centuries in stress of national disaster, to consider 
the situation and the means necessary to rescue their country. 
They organized and drove out the French Army. They then 
appealed to the Prince of Orange, who was living in London, 
to come over and lead them. The Prince replied, "I will if 
you will establish a government where the ruler rules by the 
consent of the governed and with a constitution which creates 
a representative parliament." As the heads of the House of 
Orange had done for centuries, this Prince organized a. Dutch 
Army and expelled the enemy beyond the frontier. At Water- 
loo he and his soldiers performed prodigies of valor and con- 
tributed materially to the victory over Napoleon. When he 
was wounded, he tore from his uniform the decorations which 
he had won on many battlefields, and tossing them to his 



112 



troops, said, "If I die they are yours, for you have assisted 
in winning them." 

In the peace that followed, the independence of Holland 
was recognized and has been successfully maintained for a 
hundred years. During that period Holland has fully sus- 
tained her position among the nations of the world in the 
liberality of her institutions, in the hospitality of her people, 
in the enterprise of her merchants, and in the devotion of her 
citizens to their country and their God. 

The cry with which they welcomed the Prince of Orange 
and which rang through every hamlet and every cottage in 
the land was "Oranje Boven." The motto of this society is 
"Oranje Boven" ; let us here to-night rise and joyously cele- 
brate this hundredth birthday of the renewed liberty and 
restoration of Holland by shouting with cheers and in unison, 
"Oranje Boven"! 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
at the Dinner by the Lotos Club to Howard 
Elliott, Chairman of the Board of Directors of 
the New York, New Haven & Hartford R. R. 
Co., December 13, 1913. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : I have had a half cen- 
tury of opportunity for the intimate study of railway presi- 
dents. When I became attorney for the railway company 
forty-eight years ago, the three great presidents who filled the 
front page of the newspapers and occupied the attention of 
the country were William H. Vanderbilt, Col. Thomas Scott 
and John W. Garrett. 

Commodore Vanderbilt began with the Harlem Railroad, 
one hundred and twenty-eight miles long; he and his son, 
William H., and his sons extended the system until it is now 
over twenty thousand miles. Col. Thomas Scott and his 
successors in the Pennsylvania, have done the same for that 
system, and John W. Garrett and his successors in the Balti- 
more & Ohio, a similar work in that system. 

There is only half a century between that period and now, 
a mere tick in the watch in the progress of time, but in the 
evolution of our country a greater progress and development 
than ever known before among any people or any nation. 

It is well known that every mile of railroad into new ter- 
ritory brings into existence the settlement and cultivation of 
several hundred farms. It is well known that without trans- 
portation facilities between farm and market, the richest agri- 
cultural country in the world is a desert and industrial cities 
cannot either be created or exist. 

The early part of this period was one of development of 
the country by the extension of railroads. The offices of the 
president of that period were filled with citizens begging for 
railroad extension; they had no money, they depended upon 
getting railroad facilities, and they wanted capital to invest for 
their benefit and take all the chances of the investment. It 
was an agricultural section that might be brought into settle- 



H4 

ment and development; it was a water power through which 
industries and a manufacturing town might be created; it 
was an ambitious city which with further facilities at the ex- 
pense of the railroad could enlarge the area of its market. 

Immediately following the citizens desiring these facilities 
came the promoters. This period furnished the greatest oppor- 
tunities for this class of idealists. I came to have the largest 
admiration for the imagination and hopeful audacity of these 
rainbow chasers. They became so numerous that they were 
assigned to me and had to get through my office to see the 
president. We now have become accustomed to millions, multi- 
millions and billions, but I have seen visions of untold mil- 
lions rise in airy clouds before my eyes while the eloquent 
promoter was expending his scheme, to be dissipated by the 
cold breath of a hard fact, or the lack of hard cash. 

Dickens had only a limited field when he drew the char- 
acter of Macawber. If he had sat in my chair, Macawber 
would have been a pygmy of airy opportunity compared with 
my promoters. I remember one of most impressive personal 
appearance and apparent prosperity. He carried a large map 
in his hand and with extraordinary skill he started it with a 
push and it rolled across the floor. With his cane he developed 
his plan. "There are the railroads under Vanderbilt control, 
there is the territory of the Pennsylvania, there that of trie 
Baltimore & Ohio, there is what the aggressive systems west 
of Chicago are going to do in the East. When their plans are 
completed you will see that the territory of the Vanderbilt 
System will be bottled up and its revenues destroyed. I am 
here to save the situation. This red line marks my road. I 
have tentative options upon part of it. An initial advance of 
thirty millions of dollars is the premium upon the insurance 
policy which saves your system, otherwise sure death awaits 
it." I said, "My friend, do you remember what Bismarck re- 
marked to the King of Prussia, afterwards the Kaiser of Ger- 
many, when at the commencement of the Franco-Prussian War 
the King was discussing the map of Europe? Bismarck re- 
marked, 'Your Majesty, roll up the map of Europe.' ' Said 
the promoter, "I know you are a joker, Mr. Depew, but this 
is no joking matter, it is the salvation of your clients and of 



us 

the thousands of men in the employ of the railroad." I said, 
"It is because of the importance of the subject that I use so 
distinguished an illustration as Bismarck and Emperor Wil- 
liam." He said, "If you must have your joke, I suppose it 
means that I am to roll up this map." I said, "Yes, Your 
Majesty." "And you will have nothing to do with my plans?" 
"No." "And you will not report it?" "No." "Well, will 
you give me a pass back home ?" 

Now the difference between the railroad president of that 
period and the railway president of to-day in authority and 
power is wonderful. Those railway presidents were popular, 
the railway presidents of to-day are the most criticized officials 
in the country. There were no restrictions upon the earlier 
presidents either by the United States or the several States ; 
they were not hampered to any considerable extent by labor 
unions ; their authority was practically unlimited, and also their 
power for good or evil. The presidents were broad-minded 
and patriotic. Troubles came because the same arbitrary 
power naturally went to the heads of the freight department, 
the passenger department and the other departments of the 
company. These minor men became local tyrants and created 
abuses in discriminations which led to popular indignation and 
restrictive legislation. They were all generals — General Freight 
Agent and Assistant General Freight Agent, General Passen- 
ger Agent and Assistant General Passenger Agent, General 
Traffic Manager and Assistant General Traffic Manager, Gen- 
eral Superintendent and Assistant General Superintendent, etc., 
until it was something like a Mexican Army. 

I remember being at a dinner at the United States Hotel 
in Saratoga with Mr. Vanderbilt — he was a modest and retir- 
ing gentleman — when a loud voice at the table in the rear of us 
was arousing the attention of everybody. The voice said, 
"Send me the head waiter," and the head waiter came. "Are 
you the head waiter?" "Yes, sir." "I want you to understand 
there is nothing in this hotel that is too good for me. I am 
Assistant General Passenger Agent of the New York Central 
Railroad." That man and his like have disappeared from the 
railroad service. 

Railway presidents of to-day have tremendous responsi- 



n6 

bilities and very little power. Their offices are crowded with 
the representatives of the various unions on the line demand- 
ing increase in pay; with citizens complaining of rates; with 
reporters wanting to know what defense they have to offer for 
the accident which has happened; with process servers sum- 
moning them before some State or Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission or Grand Jury. In the Pirates of Penzance the police- 
man sings, "The policeman's lot is not a happy one." 

The Government, National and State, have practically all 
power now over the roads; no expenditure can be made, no 
debt can be increased, no line can be extended, no rate can 
be fixed, no function whatever can be performed without con- 
sent of one, or all of these Commissions. It is power without 
responsibility as to results. On the other hand, the Labor 
Unions have grown into such strength that they absolutely con- 
trol the wages, hours, discharge for any cause and conditions 
of service among all the employees of the railroads. 

The president is expected to satisfy by his administration 
the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Commissions of the 
several States through which his line runs, the employees of 
the company, the public who travel and who send their prod- 
ucts over his line, the cities which are eternally wanting greater 
terminal facilities and larger and more magnificent depots, and 
the stockholders who expect some return upon their invest- 
ment. For every accident he is responsible and of every labor 
difficulty he is the cause. 

The railroad president of to-day needs to be a statesman 
of broad knowledge and economic information, of large experi- 
ence in public affairs as well as in the operation of his railroad, 
of that rarest tact which keeps harmony with employees and 
at the same time serves the public. He needs a knowledge of 
the law which will enable him to guide his administration 
through the conflicting statutes of the various States. In the 
early days the president's closest association was with the 
Freight Department, from whence came the most of his money ; 
the Passenger Department, from which came the most of his 
troubles, and the Operating Department, which was nearest the 
people. To-day he is closest to the Law Department. The 
General Counsel must be at his elbow, when what is lawful in 



ii7 

one State is unlawful in another, and sometimes both unlawful 
under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, to keep the president 
cut of jail. 

It is said that an ambitious and talented young man asked 
the head of one of our great technical schools how long it 
would take him and how much it would cost to be an expert 
railway man and to become president of a system. The teacher 
replied, "If you want to master the most difficult problem of 
to-day, which is railroad transportation and the management 
and operating of railways, so as to become a president, it will 
take seven years in time, and, economically used, ten thousand 
dollars in money. If you want to become a Congressman or 
Legislator fully capacitated to solve these problems without 
effort, it will take three months of time and one hundred dol- 
lars." 

The present situation demonstrates how absurd it is to 
restrict the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission by 
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or any other restrictive legisla- 
tion. That Commission represents the people, and is alone 
competent to do the right thing and should have power com- 
mensurate with its responsibilities. 

The parcel post, long demanded and a public necessity, 
invades the whole field of express service. The express com- 
panies pay to the railroad one half of their receipts for the 
transportation and expedition of their matter. The Govern- 
ment has not as yet paid to the railroads one dollar for carry- 
ing the parcel post, but the Interstate Commerce Commission 
has demanded that the express companies reduce their rates 
twenty-five per cent.— a decision difficult to understand so long 
as the Government is doing the same business by the parcel 
post in competition with the express companies. If the Gov- 
ernment is to be fair in this competition, it would be good 
business to let the express companies charge more than the 
Government, which would necessarily carry the business to the 
cheapest carrier, but to compel the express companies, in ad- 
dition to this competition, to reduce their rates to a non-paying 
basis, looks to the lay mind like confiscation. 

The railroads of the country are being starved. They 
have expended in improvements, extensions and betterments for 



n8 

the people within the last three years over six hundred millions 
of dollars. Their gross receipts have increased about two 
hundred millions, but, owing to the increase in wages in 1910 
and 1913, amounting, I think, to over sixty millions, and in- 
crease in cost of materials, the net this year was sixteen mil- 
lions of dollars less than it was three years ago. In other words, 
the railroads have not received a dollar of return on their in- 
vestment of six hundred millions, paid wholly for the public 
convenience and benefit. The public is the beneficiary, receiv- 
ing the improved service and the additional taxes, because 
when a railway company spends many millions for a depot 
made more artistic and extensive to satisfy local pride, the new 
station earns nothing on the investment, but the local author- 
ities add its cost to their assessment for taxes against the rail- 
road. 

Those who oppose the present application for a very slight 
increase in the railway rates cite one prosperous road, the 
Lackawanna, but they fail to note that others, like the New 
Haven, are being starved, not permitted to meet, in the only 
way a railroad company can meet increasing operating ex- 
penses, by increased rates for doing the business. I know of 
one railroad, not a very great, but still an important one, 
which by the first increase in wages was put out of dividend 
paying, and by the second increase will fail this year to meet 
fixed charges. To put that road in the hands of a receiver 
means poorer service to the territory through which it runs; 
it means depreciation instead of maintenance and stagnation 
instead of improvement, all of them injurious to the unfor- 
tunate producers in that territory, while an increase of rates 
sufficient to meet these obligations and keep up the line would 
be so small that neither the producer nor the consumer would 
feel it at all. It is estimated that the additional cost per 
household from the advanced charges resulting from the five 
per cent, increase in freight rates asked by the roads would 
average but thirty cents a year. This is all that the average 
family of the country would contribute toward the sixty 
millions of dollars' increase in wages which the railroads have 
given their employees in the past three years. 



IIQ 

Mr. Prouty, the distinguished chairman of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission, says that the advance asked for by the 
railroads might be granted if the Commissioners knew what 
they would do with the money. The Commission practically 
controls that, and at this day of publicity, frequent reports to 
Interstate and State Commissions, unlimited power to inves- 
tigate and an enlightened conscience among railway executives 
— it is safe and wise to trust the companies. It is patriotic 
also, for the process of starvation cannot go much further 
without producing financial and industrial disaster involving 
the whole country. 

The morning papers tell the glad news of the recovery of 
the stolen Mona Lisa, the masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci. 
When the find was announced in the Italian Chamber of Depu- 
ties, these statesmen were in a wild scrimmage with fist and 
feet, but instantly the fight stopped and the Chamber resumed 
the dignity of the ancient Roman Senate. 

The whole world rejoices in the saving of this incom- 
parable portrait with her tantalizing smile and witching eyes. 
Let us hope that the news will open the orbs of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission and save the industrial situation of the 
country. 

I was for twenty-five years a director of the New Haven 
Railroad Company prior to 1903 and am very familiar with 
conditions in New England, as to its industries, transportation 
necessities and the general distribution among the people of 
New Haven Railroad stock. 

Mr. Elliott enters upon his work facing one of the most 
serious tragedies in railway history — the dividends of the stock 
of the New Haven Company have for forty years been the 
living, and in some cases the sole living, of thousands of fami- 
lies of limited means in the New England States. If Mr. 
Elliott can receive, as he ought, the help of the National and 
State Commissions with their supreme power, he will reincar- 
nate and rehabilitate the New Haven System. 

The New England railroads have the task in the most 
productive territory of the country of keeping that territory 
productive and growing when at the sources of its raw mate- 



120 



rial competition with its manufacturers grows more severe 
every year. 

It is the man who ultimately counts in all railway opera- 
tions. No matter how excellent or wonderful are safety appli- 
ances, the responsibility ultimately rests on the operator. In 
the largest degree in administration, the success or failure of 
a great and complicated system depends upon the executive. 
In the present crisis that man is Howard Elliott. 

Five generals failed and lost their reputations, a hundred 
thousand men were needlessly sacrificed and a thousand mil- 
lions of dollars lost with the Army of the Potomac before 
Grant took command, and Appomattox followed. I believe, 
and so do all of us, that the New Haven has found its Grant, 
and that under Elliott the system will resume its old place as 
one of the most productive and popular lines in the country. 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Dinner Given to William C. Brown by 
his Official Associates at the University Club, 
New York City, December 29, 1913. 

My Friends : I have participated in celebrations, such as 
we are enjoying to-night, for nearly as many years as the age 
of our guest. I began way back in college days with dinners 
to retiring professors, and have continued since in appreciations 
for Presidents and ex-Presidents of the United States, Gov- 
ernors and ex-Governors of the State of New York, Mayors 
and ex-Mayors of the City of New York, and others who have 
attained distinction. 

In nearly all festive gatherings like this, though in honor 
of an eminent gentleman, there is a flaw in the diamond — it is 
that a personal interest, suggesting gratitude for favors to 
come, attaches to the hospitality the hosts are giving— 
but to-night the diamond is absolutely pure and flawless. 
We are here to bid hail and farewell to our Chief upon the 
occasion of his retirement from his responsible position into 
private life, because of our admiration for him as an execu- 
tive, because of the charming associations we have had with 
him as his colleagues, his cabinet and members of his staff, 
and because we love him. 

There is a harmony among railway men which exists in 
no other profession. Rivalries among lawyers and doctors, 
and fierce competition between business men tend to the 
creation of personal animosities, but railroad officials are almost 
absolutely free from envy, jealousy or malice. They rejoice 
at the promotion of a brother in the profession and are de- 
lighted at the honors which are merited and given to their 
associates. 

Even in the old days when there was unlimited rate-cut- 
ting to the diaster of the corporations and the public, and 
when the pressure from stockholders, directors and the press 
was brought to bear upon executives and traffic managers 
to break up the custom and make agreements for the main- 



122 



tenance of rates, and when, as was customary in those 
times, for all those who participated to endeavor before the 
signing and execution of the agreement, to make contracts 
for cut rates to the limit of its life, even then there were no 
animosities, only admiration for the officer who reached the 
telegraph office first. 

Railway transportation, which has done everything for the 
development of the country, for its settlement, for the crea- 
tion of its cities and industries, affords more opportunities for 
capable, resourceful and able men than there is a supply. 

The difficulties, dangers and responsibilities of high 
executive positions in the railway, with the necessity of satis- 
fying a Board of Directors, generally composed of the strongest 
men in the country, of stockholders who are anxious for a rea- 
sonable return upon their investment, and of the public, always 
alert and rarely satisfied, create a brotherhood among the mem- 
bers of our vocation. But there is quite another reason for 
our friendship and sympathetic unity ; it is the efforts constantly 
made by politicians to bar from participation in the honors 
of public life the two million of honest, most intelligent and 
worthy citizens who are in the ralway service. 

Railways have been unpopular and will continue in a 
measure to be so, because the transportation of goods and 
persons is in the nature of a tax. We know that for the service 
rendered the public pay less to the railway companies for carry- 
ing their goods and their persons than they are compelled to pay 
for any other service they require. Nevertheless, there would 
not be any hostility to a railroad man serving the public in 
any capacity, local or general, if it was not fomented by 
politicians because they think it is popular. 

At a dinner last week a distinguished officer of the Gov- 
ernment was the guest of honor. This eminent official said in 
effect that "one of the reforms which has been brought about by 
the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution for the elec- 
tion of United States Senators by the people, was that no rail- 
road officer or employee could hereafer occupy a seat in the 
United States Senate." This prohibition is not to apply to a 
manufacturer who is deeply interested in the tariff, nor to a 
newspaper publisher who is also interested, nor to a lawyer, 



123 

nor to a doctor, nor to a minister, nor an artisan, nor to a 
mechanic, nor to a professional politician who lives by his wits, 
nor to the gambler in food products or necessaries of life, but 
only to railroad men. 

It is an assertion which has been disapproved every time a 
railroad man has been chosen for local or general office, that 
he, by reason of his association, will not give to the public 
unselfish and patriotic service. I believe that if a majority of 
Congress was composed of men in the railway service who 
had been trained in the school of dealing with the public, with 
an intimate knowledge of the needs of the village, the county, 
the State, and the general government, which is necessary for 
a railroad man, there would be much better and much more 
useful legislation, and so far as laws can accomplish such 
results, increasing prosperity and opportunity for everybody. 

Chief Arthur, for many years head of the Brotherhood 
of Locomotive Engineers, was a man of commanding executive 
ability. He would have adorned the Governorship of the State 
of New York, or a seat in either the House of Representatives 
or the Senate of the United States. Politicians who thus 
misrepresent our profession think it is popular and safe, 
because railway men don't care, but some day the railway 
men of the country will get tired of this abuse. They possess 
the power through their perfect organization to retire perma- 
nently from public life all such enemies, because of the voca- 
tion they have selected for their life work. 

I have known more or less intimately all of the Presi- 
dents of the United States, commencing with Abraham Lin- 
coln, and all of the Presidents of the New York Central. Rail- 
road, commencing with Dean Richmond. Richmond was one 
of those original, masterful, forceful leaders of men who makes 
a mark upon his time. It was while I was a member of the 
Legislature, over fifty years ago, that I became acquainted with 
him. The union between the Central and the Hudson River 
roads had not then been made. Richmond was not only Presi- 
dent of the New York Central, but he was the unquestioned 
leader of the Democratic Party in the State. His writing was 
the worst ever known, and could rarely be deciphered even by 
himself. 



124 

' A story was abroad then that the Bishop of Western New 
York had written to him requesting a pass ; he answered 
briefly denying the request; the Bishop thought it was a 
permission to ride free, it was so accepted by the conductors, 
and his grace, the Bishop, had transportation over the New 
York Central Lines for a year with the compliments of the 
President. 

Commodore Vanderbilt, under whose administration I first 
came into the service, was one of those original geniuses with 
rare constructive talent who arise only once in a century. 
As an illustration of the difference between his time and now 
— though he was the richest man in the United States, though 
he controlled more lines of railway than any other man — he 
was popular with the public. It was because at that time the 
public wanted men like him to extend the railways for which 
all communities were crying, and to enlarge the facilities of 
existing lines. If he was alive now how different would be 
his position ! 

William H. Vanderbilt was an exceedingly able and capa- 
ble executive ; for his time he was better fitted for his great 
task than would have been his father. He suffered under that 
handicap which so often comes to the sons of very great 
men ; the overshadowing genius of the father does not give to 
the son a due appreciation of his abilities, even if they are as 
great as those of his parent. 

The New York Central has had several Presidents since 
Mr. William H. Vanderbilt. I held the office for thirteen 
years. Also in the list were Mr. Rutter and Mr. Callaway. 
Mr. Newman, whom we are all glad to greet here this even- 
ing, was one of the broadest-minded, ablest and wisest of the 
railway presidents of my time. When he had reached the ze- 
nith of his fame, power and usefulness, when the directors 
were begging him to remain, and stockholders were unani- 
mous in wishing him to continue, and the whole employment 
of the service were happy and satisfied, he showed his wise, 
level-headedness by an act of renunciation which I have rarely 
witnessed. For him to stay was to hasten, by responsibilities 
increasing with the advancing years of his life, his entrance 
through the pearly gates into the other world. He knew what 



125 

this world is, what a good world it is for those who treat it 
right, how full it is of good people whom you can enjoy and 
who can enjoy you, and he made up his mind to stay here and 
enjoy Heaven on earth just as long as he could; certainly for 
the five years that he has been trying this experiment he has 
been most successful in health, happiness and evidences of 
longevity, and radiating happiness and goodwill all about him. 
Mr. Brown came into the New York Central service 
when it needed his great talent, his executive ability and his 
creation and control of efficiency. The system has wonder- 
fully prospered under his management. The most beautiful 
station in the world has been constructed under the most ex- 
acting conditions and greatest difficulties in the maintenance 
of the train service. It has been the wonder of the engineers 
who have visited us from other countries, that with tracks 
shifted every hour and blasting all about and excavating every- 
where and structures going up, that the train service, so 
vast, so complicated, of the three lines terminating here, should 
have been uninterrupted. This beautiful station suggests one 
accomplishment of our President. 

He, however, I think will be longest remembered for what 
he has done in bringing about harmonious and cordial relations 
between farmers and the railroad. The experimental farms 
which he has had the railroad company establish along its 
lines have been schools of instruction which ultimately must 
be efficient instructors in carrying people back to the farm, 
in adding to attractiveness and in reducing the cost of living. 
It is a saying almost as old as the ages that "The man who 
makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before 
is a benefactor of his race." Grass, however, feeds the cat- 
tle on a thousand hills, but Mr. Brown has succeeded in mak- 
ing three ears of corn grow where only one grew before, and 
that feeds the multitude. 

We hear much in our country of "self-made men" ; many 
of them are not admirable types, on the contrary quite the re- 
verse. Few of them, as they assert loudly, stridently and ag- 
gressively, that they are self-made, are ever popular or pleas- 
ing. I remember when a baldheaded man was boasting that 
he had made himself, William R. Travers said to him : "Why 



126 



the devil, when you were doing it, didn't you put some hair on 
your head?" The railway furnishes an opportunity for the 
growth of self-made men whose existence is a valuable asset 
to the whole country, both in what they do and in the example 
which they set. Every man about this table is, in a way, a 
self-made man, but among the most conspicuous is our ex- 
President, Mr. William H. Newman, our President, Mr. 
Brown, who is about to leave us, and our incoming President, 
Mr. Smith. 

When Mr. Brown was a boy upon the farm he dropped 
the plow, climbed the fence and enlisted in the railway service 
in the humble but useful capacity of feeding wood (which was 
then used instead of coal) to the tender of the locomotive. 
That excited the attention of a section foreman who wanted 
him to take the spade. He soon knew more than the section 
foreman, and then the head of the telegraph service required 
him ; the train dispatcher saw his talent and made him an as- 
sistant; the superintendent needed him and then the General 
Manager made him Superintendent; he was so good a Super- 
intendent that the Vice-President made him General Manager, 
and so good a General Manager that the President made him 
Vice-President, and so strong a Vice-President that the Board 
of Directors made him Senior Vice-President, and he displayed 
such rare executive talent that he was elected President. 

The hard labors of an executive of a great railway very 
speedily use him up unless he finds recreation somewhere. 
Happily Mr. Brown possesses, in a large degree, the qualities 
which make a successful politician and public man. He knows 
the people and he likes to mingle with them and they like him. 
He has been a favored orator and an instructive one at vari- 
ous farmers' gatherings and meetings of Chambers of Com- 
merce. He is destined to a career in public life. When he 
enters upon his activities as a farmer with all the other things 
which will come to him and which he will do, I am sure the 
people of his State will elect him Governor, and I believe that 
he will reach and adorn the United States Senate. 

As a farmer he is already the owner of the prize stallion 
of the United States, and when devoting his whole attention 
to agriculture, he will be an efficient aid in answering the cry 



127 

for better horses. His enthusiasm cannot be restrained and he 
will have better cows, better pigs, better sheep, better poultry ; 
his land will produce by the acre so much more than that of his 
neighbor, that the Brown Farm will become an Agricultural 
University. 

Mr. Brown, we who love you, in seeking some permanent 
memorial of our affection which should be always with you 
and in your house, have selected this loving cup. On festive 
occasions its contents will be enjoyed by yourself, your family 
and your friends, and in the intervals your wife will fill it 
with flowers. Its mission is to keep in remembrance those who 
have been so long associated with you and whose admiration 
and affection have increased with the years. 



An Appreciation of the Late Judge Henry E. How- 
land, Contributed to Bench and Bar, December, 
1913. 

Henry E. Howland was at Yale with me. He was in the 
class of 1854 and I in the class of 1856. He was a junior when 
I was a freshman and a senior when I was a sophomore, and, 
while there was very little acquaintance at that time between 
under and upper classmen, Howland was so universally popu- 
lar among the students that we became quite intimate. He 
was interested then, as always afterward, in everything that 
concerned the welfare of the College. Athletics were in their 
infancy, but he was active in promoting them in the different 
classes and in the University at large, and used to address the 
classes below him to arouse their interest, having already de- 
veloped the faculty of humor and story telling for which he 
was afterwards distinguished. t 

He was a studious and hard working lawyes all his life, 
but found time for excursions in many other fields of work 
and pleasure. He was an exception in this respect to most 
of his contemporaries. He was deeply interested in politics and ■ 
became associated intimately with the remarkable body of 
young men whom Chester A Arthur, for a long time the Re- 
publican leader and afterwards President of the United States, 
gathered about him, and all these young men reached positions 
of distinction. 

While New York was most of the time under the control 
of Tammany, as it has been ever since, yet these young college 
men rescued the city several times in notable campaigns. la 
this way Howland became successively a Judge of the Marine 
Court and candidate for the Court of Common Pleas and Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court. He was fond of taking desperate 
chances where he believed that the people could be served by 
personal sacrifice on his part, and that led him to run for 
Alderman. During his two terms he was the life of the Board, 
and could unearth a job, expose a graft and bring even ad- 



130 

versaries to the adoption of measures of relief, both by the 
intimate knowledge which he displayed of the situation and 
of the underhand dealings of those men who preyed upon 
municipalities and his unfailing humor and good nature. Judge 
Howland could arouse the people to an interest disastrous to 
the schemes by a good story, when a denunciation would have 
fallen on closed ears and received little notice in the press. 

The passion of his life was Yale, and he joined with me in 
organizing the Yale Alumni Association of New York, of 
which I was president for the first ten years and he of the 
succeeding ten, until it was merged into the Yale Club. The 
Association was most helpful in keeping up the Yale spirit, 
bringing together the recent graduates and giving them ac- 
quaintance with the older and successful men and also helping 
the University. 

I was twelve years his colleague in the Yale Corporation. 
He never missed a meeting and was fertile in suggestions upon 
the many and sometimes difficult questions which are always 
present with the governing board of our universities. 

His attendance upon the practice games of the baseball 
and football teams, and the training of the crews, gave to the 
boys the encouragement of feeling that the governing board 
of the University had a deep interest in the establishment of 
an athletic reputation for Yale, and sustaining it upon every 
field. 

On the social side Judge Howland was one of the most 
delightful among the charming men of this metropolitan city. 
As an after-dinner speaker he had a fund of original anecdotes 
quite equal to those of the best story teller we ever had in 
New York, the late Judge John R. Brady. Few men knew so 
well what story fitted the case and how to tell it so that the 
snapper cracked and merged into the uproarious laughter of 
the crowd. He never attacked his adversaries directly, but 
had something of the Lincoln method of ridiculing them by an 
apt anecdote. 

Those who were intimate with him wondered at the easy 
way in which he met and performed his many obligations. He 
possessed that rarest faculty for health and longevity, the 
ability to go from one department of work to another, carrying 



i3i 

into the new field none of the limitations of previous activity 
which so often is fatal among men who have made successes 
in any one line, and are incapable of effort in any other. They 
become narrow through the brain pressure on the same cells, 
while the other cells become atrophied and the result is that 
outside of their offices they are uninteresting companions and 
of little benefit to their communities. Howland, however, had 
discovered early in life the rest and recuperation that there are 
in change of occupation; he had found that from these ex- 
cursions he returned to his main work renewed and refreshed. 

As a lawyer he always satisfied his clients, and they knew 
by results that they were well served. On the legal side his 
judgment was excellent, but on all sides, in the troubles that 
come to a lawyer of general practice, he had rare wisdom and 
common sense. 

Among other activities, he belonged to two dining clubs 
which met once a month. The members of these clubs were 
few and their meetings were both intimate and confidential. 
He was a valuable addition to these little gatherings of tired 
and busy men. He was fresher than any and brought to the 
table experiences from his busy life and wide contact with 
men of affairs — by way of incident and anecdote — those re- 
freshing things which make an evening to be remembered. 

During his long and most active career as a judge, a law- 
yer, a politician, a club member and club president, an educator 
and public speaker, he gained friends and never lost one. He 
filled a large place for a long time in the life of this great city. 



SPEECH BY HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Presentation of the Tragedy Andromaque 
by Racine at the Harris Theatre, New York 
City, by the French Dramatic Society, Febru- 
ary 4, 1914. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : I feel embarrassed in appear- 
ing before you this afternoon for two reasons — one, it is al- 
ways dangerous for a speaker to interrupt or postpone an 
anticipated pleasure, and the other, you are here for the pur- 
pose of listening to one of the immortal tragedies of Racine. 

We have the highest authority for the statement that it 
is impossible to paint the lily, it is equally impossible to add to 
the fame of Racine, but when Mr. Bonheur, the President of 
the French Dramatic Society, came to me with the request 
that I should say a few words of appreciation of the efforts 
of that organization in the work they began and which we 
hope may successfully continue, I could not resist. 

Certainly the Society is performing a service which is both 
patriotic and educational. Nothing could be of happier mo- 
ment than to bring to the attention of the American people 
the results of French genius in literature and the drama. 

The friendly relations between France and the United 
States began one hundred and thirty-seven years ago. It was 
a time when wars were universal, when nations were most 
hostile and were divided on race and religious grounds, when 
the ambition of dynasties and the hunger for territory were 
never so great. The American people were in revolution for 
independence and for founding a government upon Republi- 
can principles. The friendship of monarchical France and 
the assistance rendered us by the French at that time are pre- 
eminently the romance of history. 

The Marquis de Lafayette, heir to one of the best names 
in the French nobility, came here as a volunteer and gave to 
Washington the service of his sword and his fortune. In the 
darkest hour of our struggle, Lafayette returned to France 
and came back with a French army under Rochambeau and 



134 

a French navy under de Grasse, which rehabilitated the Con- 
tinental Army and the finances of our Revolution. To that 
assistance, as we look back upon it to-day, our ancestors owed 
their freedom. In all the revolutions in France during suc- 
ceeding years, this friendship of one hundred and thirty-seven 
years has continued unimpaired ; it has been strained at times, 
but never broken, and to-day it is more cordial than ever. The 
French, after passing through seven revolutions with different 
governments, forty years ago established the present republic 
modelled on the lines of the Constitution of the United States. 
Never in modern times have the French people been so loyal 
to their institutions, so patriotic in their determination to serve 
and protect them as now. Never before have French industry, 
literature and art been more progressive and prosperous. 

Nothing is more interesting than the heredity of funda- 
mental principles. The Pilgrim Fathers in the cabin of the 
Mayflower first enunciated in their charter the doctrine of 
the equality of all men before the law and the foundation of 
a government upon just and equal laws. One hundred years 
afterwards a French philosopher, Rousseau, starded France 
by advocating the same principles. There is no probability 
that he had ever heard of the Pilgrim Fathers, of the May- 
flozver or of the charter which was prepared in its cabin. The 
principle had worked its way out in his own mind. It became 
at once a toy and plaything among the dandies and beauties 
of the French Court. It became a political creed in France 
in 1783, the year the French Army, after the organization of 
American Independence, returned to France. The French sol- 
diers brought back with them the practical and successful ap- 
plication of these principles in the formation of the American 
government and the happy liberties of the American people. 
The teachings of Rousseau instantly assumed practical form. 
The French Revolution followed and the flower and the fruit 
of it all is the French Republic of to-day. 

The division of people into parties is a state of mind ; why 
a man is a Republican, a Democrat, a Socialist, a Prohibitionist 
or a Suffragette is a state of mind, so also the relations be- 
tween nationalities is a state of mind. Nothing promotes 
unity of minds in different nations like intelligent intercom- 



135 

munication and exchange of thought. I remember in my youth 
when the works of Lamartine were the rage of the day, and 
then followed Guizot; they, with the great novelists, Balzac, 
Dumas, Victor Hugo, drew closer and closer to France the 
youth of the United States. 

I have been a student and admirer of the American stage 
for over half a century. Its indebtedness to French dramatists 
and to the production of French art on the stage cannot be 
estimated. Taking the last fifty years as a whole, the majority 
of the plays which have appeared upon our stage have come 
from the French ; they we r e borrowed and then adapted. 
Language is often used to so soften a theft that it conceals a 
crime. The French play is stolen bodily, then it is adapted, 
and in the adaptation the name of the original genius disap- 
pears and in his place the adapter becomes a dramatic author. 
This has all been an invaluable education ; it has produced 
American dramatists and enriched the stage with Ameri- 
can actors of high merit. There is now, and has been for 
the past few years, a body of American dramatists who are 
producing original and excellent plays that present properly 
the aspirations and ideas of American society. Now that we 
are no longer dependent upon the adaptation to our life of 
foreign ideas and social conditions, but have a standard of 
our own, we can draw closer to and recognize more thoroughly 
and justly the French originals. 

It was a happy thought which brought about the ex- 
change of professors between France and the United States. 
The most brilliant men of the French Academy have come 
to our universities and colleges, and in the exchange American 
professors have delighted audiences at the Sorbonne and in 
the historic university at Montpelier. These exchanges have 
lead to an acquaintance followed by study of French literature 
here and American literature over there. The fruit and flower 
of this international exchange is the production upon the Amer- 
ican stage of the classics of French drama acted by a company 
of French actors. It is a wonderful advance in international 
cordiality that we can have the French stage acclimated in 
our City of New York. 

We have still much to learn, and this French Dramatic 



136 

Association has a virgin field for its educational operations. 
On my way here this afternoon, a successful man of affairs 
stopped me and said, "Where are you hurrying?" I said, "To 
the Harris Theatre to speak on Racine." "Oh, yes," he an- 
swered, "I know the place. A lively town up in Wisconsin, 
but I did not know they were selling lots in New York." 

I congratulate the students of the colleges and the schools 
that have this opportunity, which was not enjoyed by pre- 
ceding generations. The French of the colleges and the 
schools, without the opportunity for practical use, frequently 
strands the student when he or she arrives in Paris. It is 
good in its way, but the French do not understand it. But 
when it is spoken, as it will be in these dramatic presentations, 
it becomes both a delight and an instruction. 

Racine, whose masterpiece you hear this afternoon, did 
more than any other to elevate the French stage and by his 
genius to add to the beauty of the French language and enrich 
its literature. If, in the other world, the spirits of the de- 
parted are permitted to know what is transpiring here, we can 
picture the emotions of the spirit of Racine when it views 
with pride three hundred years after his death his great tragedy 
enacted in a country which he never heard of and among a 
people who, at that time, had no existence, but who in numbers 
and in power are greater than was the whole of the world 
with which he was familiar. 

In congratulating the Society upon the happy inauguration 
of its work, I am sure you will all join me in wishing for it 
permanent success and a growth which will lead to the -forma- 
tion of other similar societies in every great city in the United 
States. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Luncheon of the Pilgrim Society of the 
United States to the Right Honorable, the 
Earl of Kintore, at the Waldorf-Astoria, Febru- 
ary 9, 1914. 

Gentlemen : This room has been dedicated to interna- 
tional good will between the United States and Great Britain. 
Ten years ago this month the Pilgrim Society had here its 
first meeting. During the decade its history has been rich 
in functions for the promotion of international good will 
among all English-speaking peoples, and in results which have 
been eminently satisfactory. We, the Pilgrims, enter upon our 
second decade satisfied with our past, and hopeful for the fu- 
ture. A year ago at this same hour we welcomed the first 
delegation under the Earl of Weardale, which came over from 
England in the interest of our hundred years of peace. It is 
our privilege and our pleasure to-day to welcome another 
English Ambassador, a Statesman who has performed eminent 
services for his country in almost every department of Eng- 
lish public life. He has brought to his mission his great abil- 
ity, his ripe experience and a large talent for tact and diplo- 
macy. The cause has been benefited beyond words by the 
presence in our country of this accomplished representative 
of its purposes and its ideals. This gentleman is our guest 
to-day, the Right Honorable, the Earl of Kintore. 

We have been so busy with adapting ourselves to our New 
Freedom that we have not given this subject the attention 
which it has received on the other side of the Atlantic ; how- 
ever, it is our habit as a people to wake up late to any duty 
and then perform it with a speed and efficiency which makes 
up for lost time. The celebration of the completion of the 
hundred years of peace between the United States and Great 
Britain has an incalculable international value. 

When the representatives of United States and Great Britain 
met at Ghent to arrange the terms of peace one hundred years 
ago next December, all Europe was at war. Great Britain and 



138 

every nation on the continent had combined together for a 
supreme effort to destroy Napoleon. One hundred years have 
passed during which there have been innumerable wars in 
which every country in the world has been repeatedly engaged. 
We have had several of our own, but there has been no hostile 
shot fired between the United States and Great Britain. We 
have been frequently on the verge of hostilities but they have 
been avoided by diplomacy. The one supreme and glorious 
fruit of liberties under the Constitution of the United States 
and the Constitution of Great Britain is the growth of public 
opinion. We have had difficulties over boundary lines involv- 
ing large areas of territory which have always been settled 
only by war; difficulties over rights on the &ea, which are 
fruitful subjects for war; difficulties at the time of our Civil 
strife, which were full of reasons for war, and difficulties aris- 
ing out of our stepping in between two foreign countries and 
demanding arbitration, which with any other people and in 
any other age would have been resented by war. These causes 
for arbitration by the sword were more acute than the causes 
which led to the war between Prussia and Austria that gave 
Prussia the dominance in Germany ; between France and Ger- 
many which lost the former two of her richest provinces and 
a legacy of generations of hate ; of the contests between France 
and Austria, which eventuated in Italian unity, and the war 
between Greece and the Balkan states and Turkey which after- 
wards became a contest over the spoils between the allies and 
closed with the opera bouffe of war, the peaceful recapture of 
Adrianople which had been the object of the strife with the 
Turks. 

There is peace to-day in Europe, but it is peace so brittle 
that Germany has taken out of the principal, not the income, 
of her people two hundred and fifty millions of dollars for 
her army. France is doing the same for her army, and Ger- 
many and England are feverishly building dreadnoughts. We 
of the United States are so at peace with all the world that 
we refuse to add to our little army and fight over one more 
dreadnought for our navy. We have an irritation upon our 
Mexican border, but we are not, if possible, going to permit it 
to involve us in war. Our government's attitude toward the 



139 

parties to that conflict is illustrated by the old story of the 
wife who, seeing a life and death struggle between her hus- 
band and a bear, said, "Let the best one win, though my 
sympathies are with the bear." 

This celebration is both an event and a sentiment. If 
duty was a sentiment which had to be aroused by canvassers 
and appeals, it would have little permanent value, but a senti- 
ment which under every stress and strain has kept the peace 
for one hundred years is not an accident, it is a monument. 
There was a slight scratch upon the amber, not at all serious, 
yet deplorable, happening last year in the exception of our 
coastwise shipping from tolls on the Panama Canal. It has 
always been a wonder how, under the circumstances, the priv- 
ilege was so easily granted and it is especially difficult when 
we consider that coastwise shipping is the only unrestricted 
monopoly created by the tariff, and the policy of this Govern- 
ment is to destroy tariff monopoly. 

President Wilson within the last few days has happily 
removed this difficulty, he has relieved his party from this 
inconsistent position of being the agents of tariff monopoly 
and at the same time has won the applause of the American 
people and of the world by the assertion that when there is 
some doubt on a question of national honor, all doubts must 
be in favor of honor and faith. There is no place in the world 
more subject to brain storms than capitals, and none more so 
than Washington. This privilege to the coastwise shipping 
was passed with a rush and a hurrah under a brain storm by 
which voters in the Senate and House believed they were giving 
Home Rule to Ireland. 

We are welcoming to our shores peoples of all countries 
races and nationalities, save yellow ones, but our relations with 
the English-speaking peoples of the world, including with 
Great Britain her self-governing colonies, Canada, Australia 
and South Africa, can be differentiated in the remark of an 
old-time Southern Colonel who was discussing with a friend 
the never settled dispute about the status of different religious 
sects. "Yes, suh," said the Colonel, "a Catholic can get to 
Heaven, so can a Presbyterian, a Baptist, Methodist, Con- 
gregationalism Unitarian, or Universalist, but if you wish to 



140 

go to Heaven as a gentleman with gentlemen, yon must be an 
Episcopalian." 

There is confusion in the public mind that this sentiment 
expressed in the celebration next year includes only the Brit- 
ish Isles, but there is equal enthusiasm in the self-governing 
colonies of Australia, of South Africa and especially of our 
neighbor, Canada. 

It was a happy thought on the part of our friends on the 
other side to purchase Sulgrave Manor, the home of the an- 
cestors of Washington. The pilgrimage of each succeeding 
generation of Americans to Mount Vernon is a baptism of 
patriotism; the pilgrimage of succeeding peoples from all 
around the world who speak the English language to Sulgrave 
Manor will be a baptism of international and perpetual peace. 
The example of what has resulted from the absence of war 
between the United States and Great Britain during these 
hundred years is the greatest argument for world peace. 
Higher than monuments or memorials of any international 
value, or in any permanent form, is the living fruit of these 
amicable relations, the self-governing colony of Canada. If 
there had been war, Canada would have been the battle ground 
and subject to all the devastations of the conflict, but upon a 
boundary line of three thousand miles between Canada and 
the United States, there is not a sentry or a gun, or on a thou- 
sand miles of contiguous inland seas a battleship. Canada has 
in her institutions her liberties, her laws, her continental and 
transcontinental railroads, and in opening her vast territories 
for agriculture, advanced more rapidly in these one hundred 
years than any nation except the United States. As Canada 
grows in population, power, liberty and beneficence to the 
world's welfare, each succeeding generation will hail her as 
a resplendent monument to our century of peace. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

at the Luncheon given to General Thomas L. 
James on His Eighty-third Birthday at the 
Union League Club, New York City, March 
29, 1914. 

My Friends: It is a privilege to be here to-day to join 
in this greeting to our friend, General Thomas L. James. We 
all have birthdays ; mighty few have eighty-three. I can speak 
unselfishly of people who have reached eighty and passed be- 
yond, because it will be four weeks before I arrive at that 
age. To have lived so long, retaining the confidence, respect 
and love of one's associates is a distinction ; it indicates rare 
qualities of mind, of heart, rare wisdom, consideration and 
charity for others. 

I trust we all went to church this morning. I did and 
heard a most instructive and inspiring sermon from my Rec- 
tor. The preacher always illustrates the truth he is enforcing 
by a human example. Of course, it -is always the Redeemer, 
but in addition it is an Apostle or a Saint or some eminent 
citizen. 

We celebrate the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln 
because of the examples which they set and the guide that 
their lives are for posterity. 

I know of no better sermon in this work-a-day world, and 
among those who know him and those who will know him when 
they come to read his story, than our friend and guest whose 
Ions: life has been an illustration of the fact that a man can 
be true to his principles, his party, his church and his friends 
and still be more entrenched in the respect of his fellow 
citizens. 

General James was one of the active young men in the 
Republican Party with whom I came in contact when I 
stumped the country for Fremont in 1856, fifty-eight years 
ago, and he was then giving promise of the distinction which 
he afterwards attained. He was a country editor working 
through the editorial columns with rare wisdom and efficiency 



142 

for the principles which he believed, but he also understood 
his neighborhood. He was the inventor of the social column in 
the village newspaper and every young man and woman who 
became engaged could be sure of a complimentary notice, 
the bride and bridesmaids at the marriage of a description 
of their dresses, all made at home ; when they took their honey- 
moon, which in those days was never more than a week to 
some place within twenty-five or thirty miles, it received as 
much picturesque description as the honeymoon does now 
which charters a yacht and goes around the world. It was in 
this field that Mr. James discovered the faculty of imagina- 
tion, without which he never could have made his success. 

When he became Postmaster of New York there was no 
civil service; the doctrine, "To the victor belong the spoils," 
was universally accepted ; the result was that the General was 
expected to turn everybody out and to appoint in their places 
the friends of the people who had secured him his position. 
This gave him enormous patronage. It was with the pressure 
then put upon him that he demonstrated his strength of char- 
acter, and with the opportunities which obliging eminent men 
gave him, his ability to resist temptation. I think he was the 
first of the office holders of the country who installed a sys- 
tem of civil service. Of course, it was inadequate and primi- 
tive, for he had no support from his superiors or from the 
people, but it was the beginning of a great reform in the public 
service of our Government. 

During all my activities in politics, running through these 
fifty-eight years, I have been a persistent seeker for other 
people to secure them offices. I have placed in the city, State 
and Government employment many thousands of men and 
some women. My intimacy with General James was well 
known and, therefore, I was overrun with people who wanted 
me to ask him to place them in the post office. I selected a 
very worthy man and, knowing how unreliable are letters, I 
went down with the applicant. The General received me with 
his accustomed cordiality and expressed his pleasure in having 
an opportunity to do me a favor. He said, "I will not put 
your friend on the general list because it may be a long time 
before he would be reached, but, turning to his private sec- 



143 

retary, he directed, "Jones, put Mr. Depew's man on my pri- 
vate list." The applicant and I went away joyous and I un- 
dertook the support of himself and his family, we both thinking 
it was only for a few days. After a month of waiting, weary 
on the part of the office seeker and expensive to me, we went 
down again. The General called his secretary and said to 
him, "On what list did you put Mr. Depew's man?" He said, 
"On your private list." The General was indignant, but his 
secretary winked at me, which made me think he was ac- 
customed to that kind of abuse, and the General said to the 
secretary, "You ought to know better; the list I wanted him 
put on, and I regret if I made a mistake, was not my private 
list, but my special list." "Now," he said, rising, which in- ' 
dicated the interview was over, "your man is safe." At the 
end of another month the weary office seeker and I called 
again. The General said, "Well, you see my private list got 
so crowded and my special list so full, that I had to make 
another list for intimate friends like you and call it my pri- 
vate-special list, consolidating the two names; now you are 
safe with your friend on the private special." 

A few nights afterwards, at a great public banquet at 
Delmonico's, the General had a seat of honor on the dais and 
I was a speaker. I made up my mind I could add to the 
gaiety of nations by a full .and picturesque account of the Gen- 
eral's lists, special and private and private-special. I had not 
got far when he came over to me and said, "Chauncey, for 
Heaven's sake, stop this racket; you will give me away and 
my scheme will be ruined for getting rid of office seekers. If 
you will stop I will appoint your man to-morrow morning." I 
turned my description of the lists into a glowing eulogium on 
the Postmaster of New York, his efficiency and how he was 
adding to the comfort of his fellow citizens and their business 
facilities, and the next morning my office seeker received his 
appointment and is still in the post office. 

There is another incident which is of historical impor- 
tance. A few of us active workers in the Republican Party 
in New York State were responsible for the nomination of 
General Garfield for President of the United States. Senator 
Conkling was at that time the dictator of the party in New 



144 

York and the sole dispenser of public patronage. This patron- 
age was so large that it made him absolute in his authority. 
He was bitterly displeased by the nomination of Garfield 
and refused to support him for a long time. His strength 
was so great that unless he did support him, it was feared 
New York State would be lost. General Grant, who was the 
defeated candidate, with great magnanimity came out and 
traveled the country for Garfield and succeeded in making 
Senator Conkling accompany him. Garfield was elected. 
Senator Conkling demanded of the President the continuance 
of his control over the patronage, which meant the punishment 
of the men who made Garfield President. His method was 
to fight the confirmation by the Senate of anybody from New 
York in the Garfield Cabinet, unless selected by himself ; then 
he would have in the Cabinet of the President a personal and 
devoted follower who would look after and protect this source 
of the Senator's power. 

The late Whitelaw Reid and myself were in Washington 
to secure, as far as possible, a Cabinet which would be loyal 
to General Garfield and nobody else. After Senator Conkling 
had rejected several names suggested by the President, it sud- 
denly occurred to me that there was one man whom Senator 
Conkling could not afford to, and would not fight, and that 
was the Postmaster of New York, General Thomas L. James. 
James was a citizen of Utica, Mr. Conkling's own city. He 
had been a devoted friend of Mr. Conkling during the whole 
of Conkling's career and a most efficient one, but I knew that 
if Mr. James entered the Cabinet of the President, it would 
be as a friend as well as an adviser of General Garfield, and 
that he could not by any old association be seduced from that 
allegiance. That was his character, but I took into account 
also his blood. He is a Welshman, and the peculiarity of a 
Welshman in a crisis is that he has the courage, patience and 
persistence of General Grant and the obstinacy of an army 
mule. 

General James was appointed, and while Senator Conkling 
did not approve, he found it impossible to fight his confirma- 
tion and believed that soon he could command his loyalty 
against the President. He was mistaken. No member of Gar- 



145 

field's Cabinet was truer to him or of greater value to him 
than his Postmaster-General. This appointment was the be- 
ginning of the fight upon Garfield's Administration, which led 
to Senator Conkling's resignation from the Senate and re- 
tirement from public life, and in the bitter partisanship of the 
time caused a lunatic to assassinate the President. Thus was 
the history of the United States changed. 

The value of any human being is dependent upon the 
atmosphere in which he or she moves and in which they have 
their being. This is not the air common to us all, but it is 
the atmosphere which we all create ourselves. It may be 
repellent so that none can breathe it comfortably ; it may be 
cold so that all are chilled who come within it, but there are 
many right-minded, right-hearted people whose sensibilities are 
not narrowed by the accidents of life, nor their charity dis- 
sipated by enmities or betrayals, but who, by their words and 
actions, spread good will and good fellowship all around them. 
The atmosphere of such people communicates to other atmos- 
pheres, so that whole communities share in the blessings which 
flow from such characters. During his long, fruitful and emi- 
nently useful life an innumerable host have enjoyed and been 
benefited by the atmosphere created by General Thomas L 
James. 



Some Views on the Threshold of Fourscore of 
Chauncey M. Depew, LL.D. 

At the Twenty-second Annual Dinner given by the Mon- 
tauk Club of Brooklyn, in Celebration of Senator Depew's 
Seventy-ninth Birthday, April 26, 191 3. 

At the Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the En- 
trance upon the Ministry of the Rev. Henry A. Brann, D.D., 
Lexington Avenue Opera House, May 29, 1912. 

At the Fourth of July Celebration of the American Society 
of London, England, July 4, 1912. 

At the Banquet Celebrating the One Hundred and Forty- 
fourth Anniversary of the New York Chamber of Commerce, 
Waldorf-Astoria, November 21, 1912. 

At the Meeting in Memory of Vice-President James S. 
Sherman, held by the Republican Club of the City of New 
York, November 24, 1912. 

At the Luncheon of the New York State Society of the 
Cincinnati at Metropolitan Club, New York City, November 
25, 1912, in Celebration of the Evacuation of New York by 
the British Army, November 25, 1783. 

On the Occasion of the Presentation of the Grand Jewel 
of the 33 to Senator Depew at the Masonic Hall, New York 
City, December 20, 1912. 

At the Dinner given by the Lotos Club of New York to 
Governor William Sulzer, February 8, 191 3. 

At the Pilgrims Society Luncheon to the Delegates from 
England, Canada and Australia to Arrange for Celebrating 
One Hundred Years of Peace among English Speaking Peo- 
ples, Waldorf-Astoria, May 5, 1913. 

Tribute to the German Emperor at the Concert given on 
the steamer Kronprinzcssin Cccilic, June 14, 1913. 



148 

At the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Formation of 
the Village of Ossining, State of New York, October 13, 1913. 

At the Dinner given by the Lotos Club of New York lO 
His Serene Highness Prince Albert of Monaco, October 25, 
I9I3- 

At the Annual Dinner of the St. Nicholas Society of New 
York at Delmonico's, December 6, 191 3. 

At the Dinner given by the Lotos Club of New York to 
Howard Elliott, Chairman of the New York and New Haven 
Railroad Company, December 13, 191 3. 

At the Dinner given to William C. Brown by his Official 
Associates at the University Club, New York, December 29, 
I9I3- 

An Appreciation of the late Judge Henry E. Howland, 
Contributed to Bench and Bar, December, 191 3. 

At the Presentation of the Tragedy Andromaque by Racine 
at the Harris Theatre, New York City, by the French Dramatic 
Society, February 4, 1914. 

At the Luncheon of the Pilgrim Society of the United 
States to the Right Honorable, the Earl of Kintore, at the 
Waldorf-Astoria, February 9, 1914. 

At the Luncheon given to General Thomas L. James on 
his 83d Birthday at the Union League Club, New York City, 
March 29, 1914. 



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